Faith
by Ada Adore
Summary: Faith is something you see with your heart, not with your eyes. Leon/Ada Complete
1. Desperate Measures

**Faith**

_Author's note: _It's me, back from the brink again! And I have gifts for everyone- my sequel to **Hope**. Apparently quite a few people have been waiting for this fic so I _really _hope that lives up to those expectations and people enjoy this.

Though this prologue is about Ada, the main part of the story is predominantly about Leon. If you're new to this and haven't read **Hope **then that's okay, but this thing may make a whole lot more sense if you read over the first in this series (it's short so it won't take too long).

_Disclaimer:_ I own Underworld on DVD, a chewed-up pencil and a packet of Fresh Mint gum. If Capcom would like to trade this assortment of junk for the rights to Resident Evil, Leon S Kennedy and Ada Wong then they have a deal.

**Chapter One**

**Desperate Measures**

_Like carnivores to carnal pleasures,  
As are we to desperate measures._

_--Harvey Danger_

Desperation is an essential ingredient to achieve anything.

Desperation had resuscitated her many years ago and stolen her from the hand of hell itself. It had driven her from her home and saved her from stagnating and shrivelling as her mother had done. And finally, just hours before, it had steadied her hand as it had held a gun at the head of the man she cared for deeply.

Her desperation was fed by an abundant desire to achieve 'something great'; an escape act that would make Houdini seethe with envy.

Whisking her white napkin from her lap and dropping it onto the table, Ada Wong allowed her right leg to brush against the silver briefcase on the floor beside her chair. It was still there. It hadn't melted into thin air. She usually avoided such childish and superstitious behaviour; she abhorred it. But it soothed her this time. After every trial she had undergone to reach this point she was entitled to a few minutes to revel in her silent achievement.

Celebrating the end of a mission was more Wesker's style than hers and she had begun to imitate, almost mindlessly, too many of his traits over the last six years. But where he chose a glass of port, she had decided upon simple quiet and peace to assess the small cuts on her hands that criss-crossed over her knuckles like a map of the previous days.

That island of Saddler's, the one he had invested decades of his life in maintaining, had delivered one final marvel just twenty-four hours ago; an explosion that had swallowed the sun for hours. But Ada hadn't been able to take delight or admire its colour and form until she had spotted that faint, narrow trail of the jet-ski weaving far and fast away from the blast zone.

It was over for now. She had bought enough time to figure out her next move. Ada lifted her china cup to her lips and drank the final inch of hot, tasteless herbal tea, the steam filling her nose and embracing her from the inside out. She would have preferred something a little stronger but she was still slightly concussed from her encounter with Saddler and her head was throbbing lightly in time with her heartbeat.

The murmurs of her fellow diners and the tender dance of a Bach concerto through the reception hall were like a feathered blanket over her mind allowing it to relax. She much preferred white noise to no noise, often sleeping with the radio playing softly in her bedroom. The details of the music never registered. Silence was too cold and raw; an arena for a bare parade of anxiety and regret.

Nudging a loose strand of ebony hair behind her ear, she peered over her thin, clear-glass spectacles and glanced at her watch. It was almost eleven in the morning. He liked to keep her waiting.

After catching her ride away from the domain of Las Plagas, she had contacted Wesker with the news that her mission objective had been attained.

She had said little more than 'I'm on my way back.'

Wesker had made the mistake of underestimating her during the Raccoon City operation and he had taken steps to erase that blind spot he had where she was concerned. He rarely asks her questions about the details of her missions: 'Don't bother going into anymore detail Ada. You of all people wouldn't even think of contacting me unless your mission had been completed. Simply check in with me and tell me at what time you'll be able to return. That is all that's needed.'

Since then she had often wondered why he never interrogated her as he did his other subordinates. Was it because he trusted her? Highly unlikely if not impossible. He trusted no one. Perhaps it was specifically because he didn't trust her that he didn't question her. Why bother to ask for answers from the deceitful? It was simply a waste of breath.

Her helicopter had landed in southern Spain, just outside of a rural village of thankfully normal individuals who thirsted only for alcohol and a good harvest. From then on she had taken a secure transport to Barcelona where she had undergone a rigorous decontamination cycle and intrusive but routine medical examination.

Once she had been given a clean bill of health Ada had taken a night train to Madrid to meet with Wesker and hand him the contents of her silver suitcase. Her boss was currently staying in the Hotel Ritz Madrid close to the Prado and the Thyssen Museum in the heart of the city. The hotel was an elegant baroque palace that entertained the wealthy. Its lobby bar, which she was currently enjoying, could serve a dozens of people occasionally for hundreds of Euros a head. It had cream walls and a matching carpet with a flourish of art nouvau decoration; its tresses of fading flowers were etched across the floor, along the walls and through panes of coloured glass. The room was drowned in the pale light of the autumnal Spanish morning. Ada had spent a night in the Ritz in London once many years ago. That same night a large cache of diamonds had gone missing from the hotel safe though the rest of its contents had been left untouched.

She smiled, recalling the way the tiny, sparkling jewels had run through her fingers like sand. It had been quite a rush.

All of a sudden a small, smooth object bounced against her heel and rushed the fleeting memory from her conscious. Ada put her cup down and lifted the table cloth a few inches. It was a yellow ball, a child's toy. She frowned and scooped it into her hand, squashing the hard rubber with her fingers.

'Lo siento Señora.'

Ada turned to find a young girl at her table. She was six or seven, had long, black hair and brown eyes that hinted at a gentle sweetness, and she wore a light green dress, the colour of new leaves. Her eyes were on the object in Ada's hand but she barely moved, standing like a marble figurine. Extending her arm, Ada offered the ball to the young girl, who all but snatching it from the cradle of her fingers.

'Gracias Señora,' she squeaked.

'De nada,' Ada replied coolly as the girl turned and ran into the direction of the foyer.

She stared after the young girl and watched as an older man greeted her and swung her up into his arms, talking to her rapidly in Spanish with a smile on his face. The pair were joined by a tall, attractive woman who wrapped her arm across the man's hip, her free hand rising to rub the little girl's shoulder affectionately. With a subtle smile, Ada studied the small family as they laughed and talked and touched. A feeling of contentment overcame her as she remembered what it was like to be on the receiving end of a smile and a kiss and a love like that. Her daughter, her husband, her home.

_Do we need to go over this again, Ada? Enough._

'Señora Hu? Señor Jones will see you now,' a thin waiter with a tightly buttoned uniform informed her, 'He is in Suite 10. We will have somebody accompany you?'

Ada shook her head and politely informed him that she knew her way. According to hotel staff she was 'Melanie Hu', an American journalist from a leading literary supplement in New York who was visiting Spain to cover the arts festivals. Melanie wore glasses, sensible shoes and unflattering suits clearly tailored for someone shorter and wider than her.

She wasn't Ada's favourite alias, but the best way to recover from being Ada Wong was to pretend to be someone else.

By a pleasant stroke of luck Melanie had learned that the famous European author Milton Arthur Jones was staying at the hotel and he had kindly agreed to make a gap in his busy schedule and have an impromptu interview with her. How very fortunate for her. Ada rolled her eyes at Wesker's elaborate cover. He often chose to impersonate an obscure literary or artistic figure when he needed to meet with one of his agents. The name 'Milton' had most likely been chosen in reference to John Milton, the poet behind Paradise Lost.

_Wesker loves to paint himself as an epic hero._

Ada paid for her bland, steaming cup of tea and rose from the chair. She grasped hold of the suitcase and headed towards the elevator that took her to the top most floor of the hotel. Since the Ritz regularly served the rich and the powerful, it had to offer a measure of privacy and security. Wesker had chosen the Royal Suite of the Ritz for its private elevator and underground parking. He could enter and exit his room without anyone ever noticing him. The hotel staff were trained never to ask difficult and interesting questions so it was unlikely that they'd ever learn his true identity or wonder why the typewriter on his bureau had never been used or why his bed was rarely ever slept in or why his expensive meals were always left untouched.

It wasn't the money that interested Wesker, as his new Umbrella Corporation paid the bills with its almost limitless funds. He was thrilled by deception and the firm and delicious weight behind a really good lie.

The door was open when Ada arrived. The suitcase in her hand had become heavier with every step she had taken from the lobby to the top floor, as if its contents were swelling inside waiting until the locks were undone and it could be birthed into the open air. She pressed her eyes shut for a moment to brush off that thought and concentrate on the job at hand.

'I received news of your arrival the moment my conference call came to an end. Impeccable timing as always,' Albert Wesker muttered as he stood by the tall floor to ceiling window at the end of the room with its curtains half-drawn.

'Then why did I have to wait a full hour?' she asked, removing her glasses and swiftly killing Melanie Hu.

'Your accomplishment deserved a moment's luxury. I know how you choose to celebrate.'

Ada smiled, schooling her expression so that the reflection of the windowpane in front of him revealed nothing but a pale blur. His back was to her and as always he was dressed in plain and unremarkable black, a colour bled from the shadows, a signifier of emptiness and there was nothing more terrifying than that.

The fashionably expensive outfits of Milton Arthur Jones were in the closet, tucked away and barely worn, discarded like an old snake skin. The room had a golden hue with simple and elegant furniture, gold-plated chandeliers, crystal wine glasses and bold, authentic works of art. It was rich with emptiness, a place that only money could buy. But that did not interest Albert Wesker. Ada knew that he would tear the Picasso from the wall and rip it in two to get to the Las Plagas sample and set himself in glory above his peers.

'It's nice to be appreciated,' she replied, placing the case carefully onto the dining table. She had been through a thousand battles to get to this and she was almost reluctant to let it go despite the fact that it was relatively worthless. It was not the real Las Plagas sample of course. When she had arrived at Barcelona's main station to catch her overnight train to Madrid, Ada had made a dead-drop for The Organisation, depositing the real Las Plagas sample into a secure and discreet location. Her case held something entirely different. Something almost harmless.

Wesker turned from the window and stared at the case through his opaque shades. Then he almost growled with satisfaction, colour filling his sallow cheeks. Ada's eyes were on the case as he approached. Her chest rose and fell evenly and her fingers were locked behind her. She felt restless, but from a growing sense of triumph, not from fear.

'Were you followed?' he asked her when he reached the other side of the table.

'No. I cleared customs and they bought my cover without suspicion,' she confirmed with a feline smile that she barely felt, 'But I doubt you chose this place for the curiosity of its employees. Or their intelligence.'

'Pulling the wool over the eyes of the blind provides a fleeting kind of pleasure,' Wesker muttered as he flicked open the combination lock of the case and stabbed in its six digit code.

'We all have our vices.'

The case hissed as it opened, expelling a dying gasp of dry ice. The lid arched backwards like jaws and presented the purple vial that an entire village of people had been sacrificed for.

'True enough. But not all desires are sustainable. Are yours Ada?' Wesker continued as he plucked the vial from the case and held it up to the light like a glass of fine claret. His lips curled into a grim smile that made her gaze falter, 'Fleeting pleasure is just a small morsel for a big fish; something that is more fun to chase than it is to consume.'

'Never underestimate the simple pleasures Wesker,' Ada looked around the hotel room casually, her interest in its tight corners and its fresh, virgin state began to grow, 'I've found that they can have a charm of their own.'

He didn't reply, his attention still rapt on the glass in his hand. Ada wondered if the pleasure from the vial was what he had expected. His reaction so far had been muted and anti-climatic as if she were room service bringing him a chilled glass of water. It was strange that he chose to let her stay whilst he inspected the sample this time, as in the past he had usually instructed her to leave so that he and his researchers could begin the analysis straight away. Would he notice if she left? Would he give a damn either way?

'Saddler was an intensely paranoid man,' she stated, though due to Wesker's stony silence her voice echoed as though she was speaking to an empty room, 'He had nothing but contempt for the outside world and for the United States in particular. He would never have trusted another group or individual outside of his domain to keep hold of the Plagas sample. And Luis Sera was the only external researcher he trusted. This is the only Master Plagas specimen left.'

Wesker placed the vial at the edge of the table, just inches from the edge, 'Have you ever read the tale of Merlin and Nimue, Ada?'

'No,' she lied, frowning at the glass tube so dangerously close to tumbling to the red oak floorboards, 'No I haven't.'

'Well it's a common story. One of mercy and betrayal,' he looked up at her for the first time since she had entered and removed his dark glasses, tucking them into the inside of his thick coat. It was thirty degree inside the hotel room, but extremes of weather didn't bother him any longer. Fur coats in July, a thin shirt in January. He openly defied the climate that all other living things were slave to by natural law.

'It's about a man and his brightest pupil,' Wesker continued, his eyes black and icy, 'We have an understanding Ada, you and I. We were moulded by god from the same ball of clay. We don't live by half measures and deceit is something that cannot be sustained in small quantities. It is an addiction and addictions need to grow. This is why we survive and men like Jack Krauser perish. Do you understand?'

Ada stared into his eyes and communicated an unspoken understanding. He was testing her. He had to be. It tried her last nerve. She was too exhausted and drained for games. She needed to leave. The door was a few strides away. But of course she had an objective and it would not be completed until she was out of this hotel and into a bath of hot water that could scorch the past few days out of her body and mind.

'I think so,' she said with little expression, 'I have plane to catch. I'll wait for additional orders. You know how to contact me...'

'I haven't dismissed you,' he muttered darkly before almost carelessly sweeping the vial into his hands, 'You've worked very hard for this. Are you content to leave without having a closer look? That's not like you Ada. You're not a mindless grunt, you're a thinker.'

She didn't react when he rounded the table and stopped in front of her. Her pride didn't let her flinch when Wesker slid the gold rimmed spectacles from her fingers and dropped them to the floor, crushing them underfoot as he advanced on her.

The leather of his black gloves felt waxy against her skin of her neck and his fingers were as strong as she had expected. Ada felt him press the light bruising along her throat like a musician with an instrument. With deliberate movements his grip cupped her neck, crushing her just enough to ensure that she had to gasp hard to suck air into her lungs. He was daring her to react and protest, scream maybe or run. Her pulse fluttered against his palm. He clamped down harder, not stopping until her hands flew up and grabbed his arm. Ada grimaced at her display of weakness and steeled herself against performing another.

_I am not going to beg Wesker. I've begged before and I'm done with that now. Begging is loud and self-indulgent; but desperation is unspoken._

Wesker leaned closer, his breath cold, 'It's not like you to be so quiet Ada.'

'What can I do for you?' she asked, knowing that the pleasant and obedient tone of her voice would irritate him, 'I've given you what you asked for. Or have you grown spoilt _Albert_?'

Without warning he released her but before she could taste fresh air again he struck her and she was thrown to the floor. Ada yelled as her skull crashed into the floor, an older injury flaring to life like new. She clambered to her knees and caught sight of the door out of the corner of her eye. Her obvious and painful failure was hardly significant now. All she thought of was escape.

Fighting Wesker or going for her gun would be a worthless gesture, like fending off a mountain lion with a rolled up newspaper. Ada's shoes scrapped the floor as she scrambled to her feet and dashed towards the exit.

The air behind her shifted like a gathering upsurge of water. It slammed her forcefully against the door and dropped her into a heap at Wesker's feet. He stood over her, a syringe in his hand looking oddly like a sixth finger.

Ada chuckled a little under her breath, the sound circling down her throat like boiling water. She'd forgotten how fast he was.

It would have saved her a fractured wrist and several bruises if she had just stayed on the floor. Then again, playing dead wasn't her style.

Wesker, silently knelt beside her body. His eyes wandered over her, taking his time as he lifted the syringe to her neck and sank it into her supple skin. At the sound of her sharp gasp of pain he smiled, deep and sickly, pleasure rising into his eyes and making them shine red as if they were bleeding. This was how he was supposed to have reacted to the Las Plagas sample; it was how he had reacted to all of his new toys in the past in fact.

Finally, Ada understood. He hadn't wanted the sample. _She_ was what he had been waiting for all along.

---

_If you think this is a mean cliff-hanger just wait till you see the rest of the story._

_And fear not, I will be updating the first main chapter to this fic on Thursday. _


	2. No Rest from the Wicked

**Faith**

_Author's note: _You all rock so much. I forgot how much I like getting reviews from you guys. (-: I was going to load this up in the morning but I thought 'what the hell- I'll do it now!'

No news on Ada in this chapter or the next, but you can relax in the knowledge that she's in Wesker's custody and not going anywhere...actually that's not so comforting is it? (_looks a little sheepish_)

This is probably the first time I've written from Leon's point of view and posted it up, so I'm really nervous about this story over all. It's so hard to write at times since I'm trying to tie fantasy and optimism into a relationship that is so defined by angst.

I've completed a lot of this story and I'll be uploading a new chapter every week. But fear not, as my average chapter length for this story is between 9,000 and 10,000 words. To give a little perspective- the average update for **Timeless** was about 5,000 words. This chapter is only about 7,000, but for some reason every other section soars up from there. Some of you wished **Hope** was longer and I took that on board. My fingers are now bloody stumps from typing but I've enjoyed every second :3

I will upload a new chapter on Wednesday 16th January.

**Chapter 2**

**No Rest from the Wicked**

_Faith is the bird that sees the light and sings when the dawn is still dark._

_--Rabindranath Tagor_

'I don't know if you're already aware of this Agent Kennedy, but we're pretty proud of you back here.'

Leon S. Kennedy ran a calloused hand roughly over his face as he lay prone on the crisp, brittle mattress. He peeked through the gaps between his locked and crooked fingers. The ceiling several metres above seemed to rise and fall as his vision drifted lazily between sharp, effervescent clarity and a thick, swirling puzzle of colour.

He should have accepted the pain killers when Agent Dumont had offered to grab some from the supply room. The minute he'd said 'no' he had regretted it keenly. Nevertheless he was still running on adrenaline, the body's natural chemical candy, and despite the fact that it had been over eleven hours since he and Ashley had hightailed it out of Spain, this feeling of pure dynamism and electricity that sparked through his body saw no sign of letting up and leaving him be. His pride was currently still orbiting the far reaches of Pluto and as a result he was still labouring under the galactically foolish assumption that he was bullet-proof despite the fact that he couldn't walk in a straight line or stand without wanting to introduce the contents of his stomach to the floor.

He needed to sleep so badly that it was almost painful, but part of him was still expecting to be ambushed by a maniac with a sharpened plank of wood and another part of him was listening intently for the sound of Ashley's screams. It wasn't like flicking a switch. He just had to wait for his batteries to run out and for everything inside to shut down.

Turning his head in the vague direction of the radio transmitter on the bedside table, Leon injected a weak strain of enthusiasm into his voice, 'I was just doing my job.'

Though there was no image on the transmitter, in his mind's eye Leon pictured his superior officer's trademark 'don't give me shit' expression.

Agent Drew Mitchell was a senior member of the Directorate of Intelligence, which oversaw the dissemination of information regarding foreign issues to the President and the CIA. Impressed with the lone, unauthorised and surprisingly professional investigation the rookie ex-cop had conducted into Umbrella after the fall of Raccoon City, Mitchell had been the one to draft Leon into the government in the first place and his encouragement had been invaluable through the gruelling training regime that broke over half of the program's trainees within the first week. The CIA wasn't just a job; it was a vocation which required sacrifice; regular, demanding, unreasonable, painful, exhilarating sacrifice.

'_The CIA won't change your life Mr Kennedy,' he had said, peering at Leon over his coffee mug as the young man had sat opposite him with his forearms on the tabletop, 'It will do more than that. It'll give you a new life in exchange for you giving up the normality that almost everyone out there takes for granted.'_

But by then Leon had been sure that his normal life was over, so this great and bloody sacrifice was the equivalent of a paper-cut. He hadn't needed much persuading. His hopes of a normal life had gone AWOL the minute he'd set foot in Raccoon City and he hadn't had the will to retrieve it, if that was even possible anymore.

'Well you've only been officially working for the President's staff for less than five days and you've already made quite an impression here,' Mitchell laughed gruffly, 'Agent Hunnigan described the style of your work as "brash, ill-advised and exceptional" and it takes a lot to get her attention.'

'I'm flattered but I think she's exaggerating.'

'And I think you're being too modest. I'm not falling for that,' he replied smoothly.

Leon grimaced as he rose into a sitting position and awkwardly swung his legs over till his bare feet hit the floorboards, 'Has Ashley spoken with President Graham?' he asked, eager to put a stop to the post-match congratulations.

It was too much for him to handle right now. He was still covered in an inch thick layer of filth. He felt stifled and could still smell _that place_ on him, the living, the dead and the things that existed in-between. His temporary bandages were now good for nothing but the trash and he was desperate for a stiff drink to take the edge off the grinding migraine that made him feel like a tractor was driving over his skull.

'Yes she has, briefly. The President and the First Lady spoke to Ashley via a radio uplink a few minutes ago. I don't think I've ever seen Michael so relieved. He looked about ready to pass out when he heard his daughter's voice again. You'll see him when you get back. We've sent a jet to your location and it should arrive in a matter of hours.'

'Is that it?' Leon's neck straightened with a snap and he flinched, cupping the back of his head with his hand as he caught his breath again, 'Is that all we're going to discuss?'

'Do you want me to read you a bedtime story too?' his superior's voice was as cool and smooth as ice-cream.

'I was thinking more along the lines of a question and answer session.'

'You have questions?' Mitchell's tone of voice became hard and he was all business once again, 'Explain.'

'Just a few little issues I'm wondering about,' his glib comment slipped through his lips like a reflex. He barely even realised until he heard the words, so as he continued he adopted a more professional manner. His wrists were too sore already and he didn't want them slapped, even figuratively, 'Jack Krauser coming back from the dead, Wesker becoming active after two years of relative quiet and a plot to infiltrate the very core of the President's home and family. You could say that it's my job to be concerned.'

'If what you've reported is accurate, Saddler is dead, his cult is finished. We're aware of the threat Wesker poses Leon, but your job is presidential security. We have people working on this; good people who will gladly accept your reports and continue the investigation. Once you get back here you'll be expected to write up a full debrief for Harris and Singh. They'll be heading the investigation.'

Leon's eyes widened as he struggled to hold back a bitter growl, 'Are you serious? With all due respect Sir, Harris couldn't find his own ass with both hands and a flashlight!'

'Hey, that's enough. I know that you've been through a lot and you're wiped out, but your mission is over. I've got my people on this issue.'

'I realise that. But I know more about Umbrella than anyone in that office,' Leon insisted, 'Give me a few weeks and I'll...'

'We're not dealing with 'Umbrella'. Umbrella is dead, it's only Wesker that survives and even he has changed. This is a new threat and new threats need a fresh pair of eyes.'

Scowling at the radio, Leon almost expected the dilapidated piece of machinery to explode from the brunt of his anger alone, 'Umbrella made Wesker who... or rather _what_ he is. He hasn't forgotten and neither have I. I want to be a part of this.'

'I understand,' Mitchell replied in a measured tone which revealed that he felt nothing of the sort, 'But this isn't about you Leon or any old grudges you still hold. Take it out on the punching bag in the gym or on the treadmill. If we need your help we'll contact you. Is that clear?'

His shoulders sagged as he braced his elbows on his knees, 'Crystal.'

'Good. If there's nothing else I think you should get some rest before your ride arrives. You sound like death warmed up.'

When the transmission was cut, the air of the small bedroom fell quiet except for the croaking of an army of crickets outside the barred windows. Leon listened intently, closing his eyes and leaning his head towards the sound. His chest rose and fell with each heavy breath as he tried to kick his temper back to where it belonged and engage his brain onto the task at hand.

After they'd docked in a small town outside Perpignan on the coast of France, greeted by many peculiar and worried glances, Leon and Ashley had hiked to a safe house in a secluded area of woodland to meet with a handful of agents that had been assigned to Europe two years ago by the U.S government. It had been Agent Dumont himself that had provided the CIA with the possible sighting of Ashley several days ago in Spain, but until now Leon had never met the guy face to face. He was a short man with a balding crown of black hair and a smile like a row of crooked, yellow tombstones. Jean Dumont and his fellow agents had welcomed the shell-shocked Americans with blankets and hot coffee. Their wounds had been tended to and they had been given a safe place to rest while the President was contacted with the news that his daughter was still breathing.

The safe house was an old chateau dating from the seventeenth century and the thirty years war, or so Dumont had cheerily revealed whilst he had brusquely dabbed Leon's shoulder with gauze and antiseptic, scrubbing him clean. Security and surveillance equipment beat within the ancient walls, their wiry veins circling the compound. Several smaller, more modern wars were being fought between bureaus and agencies as they silently wrestled for control in the underworld. It had been dark at the time, but Leon had dimly made out the regal carvings and austere paintings that sneered at him from the richly painted, red walls.

The images almost dragged his mind back to Salazar's palace with its opulent furniture, billowing curtains and floors polished with blood. It made the hairs on his neck stand on end; the faded opulence of the chateaux seeming glutinous and rotten to his eyes. He longed to get out of the place and back to his apartment where the only decoration consisted of family photos and a frayed poster of The Clash, signed by lead guitarist Mick Jones, which he'd won at high school. It was his pride and joy, but his roommate at the academy had hated the sight of it.

As he rose to his feet, Leon laughed softly at the memory of their zealous, drunken, late-night debates over the virtues and vices of punk rock as an art form. Those lost months when the only thing that had kept him awake was the virulent anxiety and frustration of having his musical tastes challenged.

Grunting, he pealed his ripped t-shirt over his head. The fabric spilt in his hands and he threw the two pieces onto the bed. As the rest of his clothes and bandages followed he limped slowly towards the small, adjacent shower room, his hands clinging to the decorative railings that curled around the walls. He lifted his gun holster from the back of the armchair and carried it into the bathroom, dropping it carefully by the sink. A rough gasp splinted through his lungs as Leon leaned back against the wall and swore at the grubby mirror on the wall in front of him. Fingering the deep cut on his cheek, he winced and shook his head. It was going to be a long night. There was no way he was going to sleep with his body and mind in the state it was in. An unlikely blessing maybe, because he still had to come up with a convincing explanation for the fact that he hadn't told Mitchell the complete truth about Spain.

To be painfully honest he was infuriated with himself for withholding information. Inner protests had avalanched through him at the time and his conscious had correctly predicted that he'd make himself look incompetent as a result of his behaviour. He owed Mitchell more than this. The man was as close to a mentor as he'd ever had; the man was candid and competent. Nevertheless, Leon's loyalty hadn't delivered the one crucial detail but had thrown a sheet over the elephant in the room to hide the real reason he hadn't been so eager to curl up in bed for the past three months. Ada Wong.

Her name simply hadn't come up in Leon's brief report to Mitchell, but that wouldn't measure up as a viable excuse. The CIA had been tracking Wesker's agents for years and Ada was at the top of that list, right where she deserved to be. Smacking his palm against the wall Leon lifted his shaking body into the shower and clumsily yanked at the taps. As the lukewarm water dribbled out of the rusting shower head, he sighed and let his forehead sag against the shiny, yellow-tiled wall.

_It's your own fault Kennedy. Damn it, didn't you learn your lesson all those months ago when her picture ended up on your desk? She doesn't give a damn and neither should you._

_You should know better._

_You do know better._

Even though his shoulders shook and his heart slammed itself against his ribs, he couldn't find the will to be truly sure of anything anymore. The heady rush and sense of purpose that had consumed him during his original fight against Umbrella all those years ago was gone and Leon was left disorientated and exhausted as if he'd gone cold turkey on some sort of wonderful drug. It had been clean and simple back then- a join the dots kind of existence. Umbrella had needed to be stopped and Ada was gone. He was fighting for the life that he could have had. The woman he could have had. The beautiful creature that had sacrificed herself and gone up in flames with the rest of that damn city so that he wouldn't have to.

But the resolution had led to questions. More questions: too may to count, too many to answer. The fight hadn't been one of duty and morality; it had been of smoke and mirrors. Umbrella's supporters in the government were still out there whilst the condemned city festered, forgotten under a tonne of rubble that in six years still hadn't been completely shifted. Wesker was still out there too. And Ada was alive and working for him again.

As the water pressure began to increase, the cool liquid soaked into his skin and eroded the crust of blood and sweat that he wore like armour. Leon tried to convince himself that he could beat this. It would be easy. He could just drown himself under his work till he could forget what a moron he'd been. What the hell had he been thinking? Rather question _her_ properly like he'd been trained to do, he'd acted like a teenager on his first date: Ladies first, always compromise.

Of course the fact that she looked even more stunning than he remembered hadn't helped things. He'd forgotten all his training and practically held the door open for an enemy of the state. He could argue passionately that he did this because he'd had a more important duty to attend to, and he _had._ But he knew that he wouldn't have treated any other terrorist or traitor the way he had treated Ada. For the first time in years he'd been able to sleep without seeing her face seconds before he'd lost her. Now she was back to create a whole new set of nightmares, till once again he dreamed in black and red. He was on his way to swapping one obsession for another, hiding Ada behind his determination to crush Umbrella again. And he didn't like what that said about his work ethic.

No matter how hard he tried, no matter the watertight arguments that had raged in his head for hours, he knew that this was inevitable. Everything else was just a clever delay. He was going to throw himself back into that undying battle whether he was needed or not. For a moment, Leon dared to ask himself why he was doing this and if he'd still be as determined to be a part of the project if a beautiful red butterfly hadn't charmed her way into his life once again spreading havoc wherever she landed, tossing destruction like rose petals.

_Maybe Mitchell's right. I'm just a liability where all this is concerned._

Scrubbing hard at his forearms with soap and the coarse side of a sponge, Leon tried to efficiently catalogue everything he knew about this woman. However, his thoughts would inadvertently skim over her eyes or her lips or her incredible legs and he'd have to grit his teeth just to stay upright, tugging himself upwards with the invisible string that ran from the tip of his head, through his spine and to his feet.

Ada Wong looked great in red and she damn sure knew it, she moved like an exotic dancer and fought like a marine commando, she could shoot the maggots off a zombie at twenty paces, she isn't particularly discerning over who she worked for, he wouldn't turn his back on her for more than a second at a time but in the heat of battle, and only in that heat, he'd trust her with his life. She'd saved it too many times for it to be down to chance, but she'd also put a gun to his head yet again. Perhaps this was the problem. He didn't know much about her at all and everything he did know was based on instinct and confused the hell out of him. It was like wandering through a maze at night where the pathways kept shifting and morphing as you groped your way through the dark. The further you travelled, the harder it became to plot your next route, and there was no going back; the exits would weave shut behind you.

Leon smiled ruefully as he wondered how anyone could test and quantify this woman's loyalties or lack there of. Maybe he could put Wesker at one end of a room, himself at the other and Ada in the middle. They could both call to her and see who she went to first.

Shifting from one leg to the other Leon grimaced as a sharp stab of pain burst to life on his left thigh. He cried out and propped himself up against the wall, staring down accusingly at the short, neat slice that punctured his smooth skin. Now there was a scar that wasn't going to let itself go unnoticed. It was a reminder of how close he'd come to being the permanent plaything of a crazed zealot. Ada's reaction to his temporary insanity in Spain had been violent but appropriate.

What disturbed him the most was that he could freshly recall the entire encounter. Somewhere within the monstrous, primal rage that had roared through his body, his true consciousness had been caged like an animal and forced to watch his own hands squeezing the life out of another human being. Leon locked his jaw and swallowed his shudder behind his clenched teeth.

The entire ordeal had forced him to re-evaluate the Ganados that had stalked him in search of slaughter, the men and the women. Maybe they hadn't been dead and mindless, like zombies. Maybe they'd just been trapped. The attack itself couldn't have lasted more than ten seconds, but it had seemed like an eternity. And somehow he had felt that parasite sinking its teeth into him and feeding on the resentment that had been swelling inside his soul since Ada had fluttered back into his life. That _thing_ hadn't reacted purely out of blood lust, it had been responding to Leon's own feelings and the malicious glee that it had experienced in doing so had made him sick.

Until his fingers had sunk into the pale skin of her neck, Leon hadn't realised exactly how angry he was about everything He'd never want to hurt Ada if he could avoid it, but he couldn't ignore the effect her presence had on him. Nevertheless, as she'd walked away from afterwards, he'd found himself staring after her forlornly and, before his mind had reeled him in, he had been ready to follow Ada out of that door. He'd even taken a clumsy shuffle towards her. After all these years he was still trapped in her pull, like the tides were slave to the moon. With a heavy heart he knew most of all that he just couldn't trust her, no matter how much she'd helped him she was loyal to one person- herself. There was no way he'd ever have the power to change that.

_And remember this Kennedy, if you're ordered to take her out you'll have no choice but to follow through or face punishment for disobeying orders. Do you really want to put yourself into that position? Are you sure that you even can do your damn job with her around?_

Leon hurled the sponge to the floor, letting it wedge itself in the wide hole of the drain, 'Come on Leon,' he muttered into the rising steam, 'Think happy thoughts. Kittens. Puppies. Wesker's head on a stick.'

He was interrupted by a low noise coming from the next room; an insistent creak followed by a soft thud. Leaving the shower running, he stepped out still dripping wet, snatched a towel from the railing and tied it around his waist with a lazy knot. Grabbing his gun from the edge of the sink Leon slowly approached the door, his shoulders rolling back as his fingers slid into the worn grooves of his weapon. Throwing the door open he trained the barrel on the figure that stood half shrouded in the shadows cast by the thick canopy of leaves outside the window. The intruder yelped in surprise and instantly threw herself to the floor, her eyes as wide and bright as the headlights of a car.

'Ashley!' Leon called out in surprise as he hastily lowered the weapon.

She quickly straightened and her eyes began to dart rapidly between Leon's half-naked body and the ceiling as she spoke, 'Oh god. Oh...right. Typical me, huh? I'm really sorry. I just came to say goodnight and Jean wanted to drop off some spare clothes and I said that I'd take them to you and the door was unlocked and when you didn't answer I thought that...'

The girl continued to ramble on hopelessly as she wriggled uncomfortably under the spare clothes the other agents had given her. She was wearing a huge, man-sized shirt and jeans rolled up at the bottom. It made her look impossibly younger than before, almost elf-like and drowning in synthetic fabric.

Leon raised his hand which put a sudden halt to her explanation, 'Don't worry about it. It's all right. Really. I'm sorry to pull a gun on you. That's gotta be the last thing you need right now.'

Ashley tossed him a nervous grin, 'It's okay. I'm great. No problem.'

'Good.'

'Okay.'

'Right.'

'Um...your clothes are on the bed,' she pointed to a small pile on the mattress.

'Thanks,' he placed the gun on the bookshelf and gathered up the clothes in one hand whilst holding his towel up with the other.

_Great job Leon. You almost flashed the President's daughter. So much for behaving yourself._

'Is there anything wrong Ashley?' he asked as he backed towards the door, retreating from the steady gush of cold air from the window. He didn't expect to see the young woman smiling so soon after everything she'd been through. But though he'd only known her for a short while he could sense beads of confusion and anxiety literally pouring off her.

Ashley turned to him, her wide eyes focused on his bare chest, 'Well I uh...' she cleared her throat, 'I thought that I'd just say thanks again that's all.'

'Well...you're welcome. But it's not necessary. We got out together because we worked together.'

For the next few seconds Leon had a really hard time coming up with something to say to her so they just stood in a self-conscious silence pretending to be fascinated by the smudges on the mahogany furniture. There was something to be said for bio-hazard zones. Conversation was a hell of a lot easier there since it happened so rarely.

A sudden shiver ran through him and he remembered that he was soaking wet and making a puddle on the carpet, 'I better put some clothes on.'

'No don't!' she cried before blushing furiously, 'I...I mean, you don't have to. I...I was gonna leave anyway.'

Ducking back into the bathroom Leon shrugged warmly and kicked the door shut, 'Well if you're sure. I for one could use the company.'

As he turned off the shower and began to dress he could make out the sound of Ashley pacing the floorboards in the next room.

'Well if it makes you feel better I guess I could stay for a while,' she replied lightly, the tension in her voice dissipating just a little; she knew what he was doing but it was a relief to play along.

Shrugging on a pair of grey jeans and a t-shirt Leon emerged from the bathroom with a comforting smile plastered over his weary face, but he immediately wished that he hadn't. The longing look on Ashley's face as she gazed up at him made him feel uncomfortable and not in the way he liked. This was going to be a problem. Ashley was a great girl but even without the age difference or the fact that the President would castrate him for even thinking about it, and despite his admiration of her strength and bravery, he just wasn't interested in her as anything other than a friend.

In fact Ashley reminded him of his little sister Hannah. Smart, sweet, shamelessly outspoken and honest. Perhaps that's why he felt so very protective over her. He hadn't seen Hannah in months since she had temporarily moved to Dublin with her husband and he missed her.

During their last phone conversation Hannah had been bubbling over with joy. She was pregnant with her first kid. Their mother had told Leon quite pointedly that it was 'marvellous' that Hannah was going to make her a grandmother after all these years, and it hadn't taken him more than a few seconds to decode the subtle implication that he as a result had let her down by refusing to establish a family of his own.

His mother had never wanted him to become a cop or a government agent; she'd begged him to go to law school instead. After almost a decade of arguments he'd finally persuaded his mom to drop the issue. But despite his sincere excitement over being an uncle, a deep, unyielding part of him continued to writhe with jealousy. As far as he was concerned it was a starkly obvious truth that in his present line of work he'd have nothing to offer a child of his own and he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't fulfil his responsibilities as a father. He could just imagine what it'd be like on 'Bring Your Child to Work Day'. Guns, zombies, viral outbreaks, the inevitable self-destruct system. Social services would throw him in jail in no time. It was better that he stuck to just being a cool uncle who dropped by with baseball tickets and the occasional contribution to the kid's college fund.

'Are you all right Leon?' Ashley asked, shaking him out of his temporary melancholy as she chose an ornate silver and green chair beside the bed. She crossed her legs over its wide seat.

He sank heavily onto the mattress, its springs groaning under his weight, 'I'm just thinking about what gift I'm going to buy my sister for her baby shower. She's pregnant for the first time and my mom's organising a celebration so big it'll make New Year's Eve in Time's Square look like a kid's tea party.'

Her eyes lit up at his shameless deflection of her curiosity, 'Orthopaedic shoes!'

'What?'

'Orthopaedic shoes. I bought them for my sister-in-law when she was having twins and she loved them. Most women don't realise how much pressure carrying a baby is going to put on their ankles and feet,' Ashley replied sagely, 'She'll thank you for it.'

Grinning widely, Leon laughed, 'Okay, I'll go with your expert advice Dr Graham.'

Returning his smile Ashley continued in a more sombre tone, 'I've got something I need to ask you. I know that I asked this before and that you weren't eager to answer me, but I'm curious. I'm sorry if I'm stepping over the line...I hardly know you...really I mean...' she fiddled with the baggy sleeves of her shirt as the cuffs came loose and dangled past her hands, 'But that woman, the one in the red dress...did she have anything to do with all this?'

'I'm sorry,' he shook his head and forced his expression to remain as neutral as possible, 'But that's classified information Ashley.'

'Come on Leon. I saw everything there. I saw even more than you did,' she argued eagerly, 'There are too many questions Leon. You're the only one who'll answer them for me. My dad won't.'

He leaned forward and looked her straight in the eye, 'You're better off not knowing Ash. Seriously. Saddler is dead, they're all gone. You have a chance to walk away and have a life without all this haunting you. You'll have the memories and they alone are more than you should ever have to experience.'

She frowned at him, her bottom lip swelling into a perfect and practiced pout, 'I think I can make that decision for myself.'

Leon knew that she was right on one level at least. Saddler's evil was forever etched onto her mind. He knew that he had never really escaped Raccoon City. He carried it around with him wherever he went and Ashley would be the same. While he couldn't let go, his only hope was that she was stronger than he was.

'Listen,' Leon insisted reaching for her hand, 'I followed your advice, now you will follow mine. There are some bad people involved with all this. They won't hurt you again, I promise. But going after them like that will put so much of your life in danger and you'll regret it in no time.'

'Do you?' Ashley asked softly, 'Do you regret it?'

Pulling back he cleared his throat suddenly, rubbing the pads of his fingers along his neck to dislodge a sickening clump of nausea, 'Sometimes. But if I hadn't been involved with all that you and I wouldn't be sitting here alive right now.'

She didn't look convinced enough with his argument to let it all go, but at least she seemed more relaxed, 'I just know what's going to happen when I get home Leon. My father is going to double my guard detail and he's going to exclude me from everything just to protect me. He'll screen all of my calls, set the FBI on my dates and have me followed to the mall. How would you feel to wake up and feel like a twelve year old all over again?'

'You're his daughter,' Leon replied turning to the window, his blue eyes becoming almost silver as they reflected the half moon that peeked between the curtains, 'Having a father around you after an experience like this...it's important. You're lucky, so do yourself a favour milk it for all it's worth.'

Ashley nodded and stared at him inquisitively, her ash blond eyebrows curling together, 'I saw her looking at you, you know.'

He turned to her having missed almost every word, 'Who?'

'That woman. She was watching you from the tower when the gunshots started. She seemed worried about you.'

For a moment Leon was startled but he simply rubbed his right shoulder casually against his ear to disguise the fact that his pulse was tap dancing along his throat, 'Ada doesn't worry. If anything she was probably figuring out how to get her hands on what she came for.'

'But you said that she's a part of you...'

'I know what I said. But it's complicated Ash.'

'Maybe it isn't,' she said brightly, 'Things aren't always what they seem. I just don't think that you're as alone as you think you are.'

Watching her resolute expression and the mature glint in her pale eyes, Leon was tempted to agree. Doing so however would counteract practically everything he had been through and all that he had sacrificed to get to where he was today.

He leaned back against the lumpy mattress and regarded her apprehensively, 'You're making a lot of assumptions.'

Ashley paused and her lips parted in surprise, 'I'm sorry. I get carried away sometimes. I see a problem and I want to fix it....Not that _you've_ got a problem. I didn't mean-'

'Hey, don't worry about it,' his sugary smile felt as ridiculous as it looked so he let it tumble from his face.

Ashley nodded sharply and looked away, pretending not to notice. Despite her good intentions she'd wandered into a conversation whose landscape and pitfalls were treacherous and uncharted. With the wrong word she could trigger a landmine of a memory and blow their relative contentment apart.

After a moment of silence she squared her shoulders and continued breezily, 'Going back to college is going to seem a little tame after all this.'

Leon's lips flickered into life with a half-smile, 'You thinking of joining the CIA?'

She laughed, her golden fringe shaking and her eyes finally regaining some of their spark.

'On second thoughts I'll stick to college. My dad's throwing a dinner party when we get back. It's just going to be family and a few close friends,' she continued quickly, standing up, 'Will you at least come to that? It'll take your mind off things. I'm easily offended so you better not say no.'

'When you get to know me better you'll realise that I never turn down a free meal,' he replied, 'I guess I'll see you in a few hours. Get some rest okay?'

Ashley smiled and straightened the front of her shirt again as though trying to wrestle it into the shape of her body, 'You too. A tired agent is a useless agent.'

Her airy giggles followed her out of the room as she closed the door behind her.

Sagging back against the headboard Leon tried to relax but found sleep elusive yet again. Maybe he could start drafting up his report for that asshat Harris. Shaking his head he decided to delay that for a little while longer. Mike, Luis, Saddler, Krauser. His report was going to read like an obituary.

Counting the sharp and constant taps of the tree branches against his window just bored him senseless and he was sure that his hair still smelt of dirt and that there was blood caked under his fingernails. Swearing lightly he wondered if he had the energy to attempt another shower, but his body was a lump of lead.

Sliding off the bed, Leon decided to pack his things in the overnight bag Dumont had left for him. That'd eat up some time. Lifting his dark grey cargo-pants off the floor he wondered idly if he could get his old jacket replaced by claiming it under business expenses. As he chuckled to himself a small object tumbled out of the pocket of his pants and hit the floor with a soft clink. Groaning under the pressure to his injuries, Leon gently stooped to the floor and scooped it into his hands. He'd almost forgotten about it despite the fact that it had saved both his life and Ashley's. Fingering the tiny, white bear with the delicate blue ribbon in his hands he held the silver key up to the dim light and sighed. He could still picture the impish grin on her face as she'd thrown these down to him from her helicopter.

_You don't make it easy for me do you Ada?_

Suddenly he felt very tired indeed. So much for letting go.

Tossing the bear onto the table beside the bed, he threw his body onto the bed. His eyes felt swollen as though they were padded around the edges with old newspaper. Leon tapped his fingers along the stiff cotton of his jeans as he leaned back against the bed and arched his head around to stare through the rattling blinds that hung over the adjacent window. He was lying in wait for the sunrise, on a stake out for the dawn. But the small forest was thick with trees that filtered out the incoming call of the morning. It was darkness wherever he looked. Eyes open or eyes closed. But there was a whisper tickling the back of his head as the emotional and physical torment of the past few days began to ebb away, sucked into a silent, black hole of exhaustion for a few too-short hours. It was so easy to give in to her velvet voice, her tender plea, the glimpse of red as her lips kissed his ear.

_I'll rest my eyes. I'll rest my eyes, just for a few minutes._

Seconds after he'd folded his arms over his chest, Leon felt phantom fingers rubbing at his temple and the feathered graze of the morning breeze lulled him to sleep.

---

The sound of whimpering that shook him awake. The sound was almost undetectable, drowning under the deep murmur of adult voices that rose from below. But his ears expertly parted that sea of noise and his mind reached out almost instinctively towards the forlorn cry. But almost as suddenly as it had started, the noise stopped leaving Leon half awake. Familiar amnesia covered him like a warm, fuzzy blanket as he tried to remember who he was.

He moaned and shuffled his body around in discomfort as his rusty eyelids struggled to open. His shoulder joint popped as he tried to sit up and he winced. Finally wrenching his eyes open Leon looked around. His mind felt tangled in knots. It was like looking through a wall of water. His eyes were stinging under the intensity of the light and the force of the images rushing at him as if his subconscious had burst its banks.

Shielding his eyes with his hands, Leon realised that he wasn't in a bed anymore. He was in a chair. He could feel the stiff edge of the seat slicing into the backs of his legs. An urgent cry for action thundered through his body and he jumped to his feet ready for battle despite his partial blindness.

Slowly the images in front of him began to slot together like a jigsaw puzzle and they didn't form the picture he was praying for. He wasn't in the chateau. This place looked like...it looked like some kind of home. He had been sitting in a large, ugly, wicker chair, the kind that had been inexplicably popular in the late seventies as far as he could recall. There was one tiny window at the far end of the narrow hallway and through the small, square opening Leon could see the black canvas of night with its silver speckled stars blurred by sheets of rain. There was a steep staircase opposite him and parallel to that were four white doors, all closed. The ceiling was low and covered in a swirling pattern of artex. A single light bulb covered by a gaudy glass lampshade swung above him and projected a kaleidoscope of colour onto the stained, cream carpet. The walls were covered in so vibrant and intense a pattern of green and brown wallpaper that it nearly blew his head off. Mounted on those walls were several small photographs of zebras and lions that appeared to have been cut from magazines and then placed into thick wooden frames.

_Well there's no accounting for taste I guess. Where am I? How did I get here? And where's Ashley?_

Leon reached for his waist and found himself unarmed but still dressed in the clothes he'd fallen asleep in. There was a possibility that he could have been moved but he was a light sleeper at the best of times. He could have been drugged and that would explain his hyper sensitivity to light and sound. But to bring him here? Whatever the hell was going on it defied all reasoning as far as he could see. Talk about falling down the rabbit hole.

The faint voices from below were broken by static. It sounded like someone's TV set. The entire space was cramped and dated, but it hummed with a kind of cosy warmth that was distantly familiar to him. The more the place stressed its innocence, the worse he felt. He recognised it somehow.

Leon frowned and ran his palm over his brow. Screw it. He had to find out where he was and get back to Ashley. As he turned to make his way towards the staircase he heard a loud whine coming from the second door of the hallway. Then it blossomed into a wail. The shrill sobbing became louder. Leon impulsively took a step towards the room. It sounded like a baby crying, nature's most compelling sound.

_Okay, I've been in zombie infested cruise ships but this is freaking me out._

All of a sudden the door next to that room slowly arced open. There was a soft thud of bare feet, careless thumping against the floorboards, as a small body slipped through the crack. A boy with ash blonde hair, about five years old, edged out of the darkness and peeked around the doorframe into the hallway. He was wearing a pair of red and blue pyjamas designed like Spiderman's costume and his hair was tussled, almost completely covering his fresh blue eyes. It was only when the kid stepped out of the shadows, bathed in the grubby hall lights, that Leon felt shock spear through his gut like a harpoon. His jaw hung slack and a thin film of sweat began to seep from his neck into the collar of his shirt, making his flesh writhe under his skin. He knew exactly where he was and who this kid was, but he was sure that not even the Los Illuminados had the power to bring him here.

_Oh my God._

---

_Again with the cliff-hangers...I can't help myself. This story is slower paced than __**Hope**__ but I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and will stick with the story till the end. _

_Oh and I have another Leon/Ada story planned after this one is finished- it's a shameless angst fest where you guys can choose how the cliff-hangers are resolved. I'm addicted. I can't stop myself!! I won't reveal anything else about it now since it's just a few ideas jotted in my laptop at the moment. But I just wanted to keep you guys updated on what I'm up to._

_Have a fantabulous week!_

Carly xx


	3. The Lost Boy

**Faith**

_**Author's note:**__ And here I am again. More to the point- here's the next chapter. I have a love/hate relationship with this story for reasons I can't understand but all of your reviews mean a lot to me- so thank you very much indeed! I'm amazed at how fast you guys review actually; I think my total reviews doubled over a single night last week :3_

_I'm both surprised and happy that my characterisation of Wesker was well received as that sexy slice of pure malevolence is so hard to write for and I haven't explored him much in the past. He'll be reappearing later on in the story, popping up every now and again as is his habit._

_Without much further ado and rambling on my part- enjoy!_

**Chapter 3**

**The Lost Boy**

_You can do very little with faith, but you can do nothing without it._

_--Samuel Butler_

Leon gaped at the kid in the doorway, his eyes wide and his feet frozen to the spot; solid, heavy and oh so cold. The young boy was staring straight at him, but so far he hadn't made a sound. His nose was dusted with chocolate coloured freckles and his cheeks were as round and fresh as peaches. His pyjamas were well-worn, their edges frayed, and the cute superhero design had long since faded.

A curious red streak stained the front of his pyjama top; it looked thick and waxy. But what made Leon's heart fall to a dead stop in his chest was that he knew _exactly_ what had made that stain. It just occurred to him, less like a bolt of lightening and more like a hot whisper in his ear that sent a shiver of recognition to nuzzle its way through his nervous system. Ketchup. He trembled. The boy had taken it from the kitchen and used it as fake blood. He had been playing superheroes in his room against a horde of imaginary foes whilst wearing his favourite pyjamas. Spiderman had been backed into a corner for a while but pretty soon he'd ended up soundly kicking The Green Goblin's ass. But the bottle had smashed at that glorious point and the sauce had ended up everywhere.

His mother had been furious.

Leon's lips twitched into a tiny smile as a messy landslide of long lost memories rolled through him. This kid...it was him. Leon was staring into the face of himself aged about five years old. The hair, the outfit, the dishevelled appearance he was totally unaware of. It was a flawless recall. This place was his old home. In fact it was his very first home back in downtown New York. They'd moved out of it when he was six. No wonder he hadn't recognised it at first. This was crazy. The undead he could handle, but time travel? Standing toe to toe with his younger self? Surely there were cosmic laws against that kind of thing.

This had to be some kind of weird dream. But the strange thing was...Leon didn't dream anymore. Not really. Sure, memories of Raccoon City sliced through him as he slept, but those weren't dreams. Most of them he could barely remember when he awoke. The only impression they left was a chaotic jumble of images and a panic that tore him inside out, leaving him incoherent. This on the other hand was as clear as a spring morning and twice as sharp, bright and bracing. It stung his eyes and tickled his skin with icy fingers. He'd never dreamt like this before.

The young boy suddenly began to walk towards him, his eyes riveted on Leon's abdomen. The expression on his face was one of complete, childlike nonchalance, not that of a kid finding a strange man in his house in the middle of the night. Leon waved his hand at the child to get his attention but the young boy, his past self, just stared right through him as though he were made of glass. The boy clearly couldn't see him.

'Hey,' Leon called out softly, but the young boy didn't even flinch, 'Hey, kid!'

Still nothing. Suddenly the child turned away and tiptoed straight into the other room. He grasped the handle in both of his small, chubby hands and pushed the door open. Leaving the door ajar the kid disappeared inside.

Leon, white-faced and oddly exhilarated, simply watched. Hesitation gripped him for no longer than a few seconds. The desire to know and to explore bloomed within him like a rose against the sun's caress. Following this kid was a natural imperative; he had no choice but to join hands with that part of him, to become his own shadow.

Leon shyly craned his head around the door to the next room. So this is what dream walking felt like? Tugged by an invisible tether through his subconscious, every movement seemed novel and haphazard, but simultaneously deep-rooted and intuitive to him. He was following his own tiny footsteps, a scattered breadcrumb path through a dimension suspended like a gauzy web above the real world. They were memories only lit for an instant like beacons before fading like old photographs.

Entering a room where shadows seeped through cracks in the walls, Leon could make out the muted cries of a baby once more and they were growing louder. The room itself was miniscule, the colour of its walls lost in the gloom of the night. The loose window clattered in its frame as the gathering wind pummelled it from outside and blew its cold breath through the gaps in the wood. A cheap crib, its paint wrinkled with age, sat isolated by the edge of the room, its thin legs bowing under ages of use. The only other furniture consisted of a small set of sparsely covered shelves and a backless, three-legged chair. The austere, barren condition of the room shocked him. It seemed so alien to the past he'd constructed in his mind. He knew that his family hadn't had much when he was very young, but his mother never spoke of those days. She preferred to live as though they had never happened.

'Hannah,' the young boy whispered as he stood by the crib and peered through the bars at the whimpering baby, 'Hi Hannah. It's all right.'

Hannah? His sister. It was his little sister. Leon frowned and crept closer to the two children. Nestled on top of a threadbare, white blanket, his baby sister cried softly and wriggled, her impossibly petite hands reaching out for her big brother. The young boy smiled and slipped his hand through the narrow bars to let the girl latch onto his thumb. She calmed almost instantly, her big, brown eyes unblinking as they inspected him. She had a velvety mop of feather-light, auburn hair and a tiny pair of rosebud lips. Smiling down at the sight Leon leaned against the wall, his eyes fixed on the pair. He'd forgotten how sweet his sister had been. Then again, this had been before she had learned to talk.

The boy gently pulled away and scampered to the other end of the room, stopping every few seconds to pull up at the waist of his baggy pyjamas. He returned moments later, dragging a small stuffed toy behind him. It was a brown dog with black patches and it had only one eye. It was his toy dog Spot. His dad had bought it for him when he was just a baby. Leon shook his head, grinning at the sight of that moth-bitten toy. He used to take that thing everywhere with him. Even into the bath tub. After Hannah had been born she had developed quite an attachment to Leon's favourite toy and their parents had gently encouraged him to let her have it since he was all grown up. Leon had responded by proving them wrong and throwing the mother of all temper tantrums, but within a few hours of being forcibly parted from Spot he had almost forgotten about it. Though to this day he still hadn't completely forgiven his sister for renaming the dog 'Princess'.

Stretching up high, the young boy lifted the toy dog over the bars and let it lie next to Hannah.

'Mom forgot to give it to you again,' the boy said, his voice low and far too solemn for one so young, 'She knows you can't sleep without it. She's just tired and forgets stuff these days. She's sad because she had another fight with Dad.'

Leon's eyes narrowed in confusion. His parent's marriage was another blank spot, but his mother had never mentioned fighting, at least nothing beyond the average level of marital tension. Surely he'd be able to recall his parents having regular arguments, especially in a home where the walls were so thin you could hear a TV a block away. What was all this about?

'I miss Dad too,' the kid continued, wiping his runny nose with the end of his sleeve, 'But he's gonna be home soon. So we shouldn't worry, okay?'

Hannah yawned and curled up next to the stuffed animal, her eyes fluttering shut. She mewed softly and her hands fell beside her face.

''Night Hannah,' the boy murmured to his sister.

Leon found himself captivated by the sight and he, like his young doppelganger, let himself drift away for a moment. He barely remembered doing things like this. His childhood was a patchwork of anecdotes and photographs. Was this even a real memory? He still had no idea why he was here, how he was here and where he'd end up next. It felt so real yet so bizarre to secretly watch his childhood from the wings like an intruder into something intimate and precious. Nevertheless, he was distinctly pleased that being a protective big brother was the single thread that ran throughout almost his entire life.

'Leon! Are you out of bed again?'

Glancing down at the look on his younger self's face Leon knew that they were both thinking the same thing.

_It's Mom. I'm in trouble!_

The boy dashed from the crib towards the hallway. He was surprisingly fast despite his short legs. Leon followed behind him and watched himself disappear into his bedroom and quietly shut the door.

Moments later he heard his mother's footsteps begin to fall on the stairs below. She got halfway up before the doorbell rang, its chime echoing against the sharp corners of their narrow apartment. Crossing his fingers that the woman wouldn't be able to see him either, Leon arched over the railings and looked down.

She was almost unrecognisable. Her dark blond hair was free of any grey strands but was piled into a haphazard bun at the nape of her neck rather than in an elegant arrangement of curls. Several loose strands hung over her forehead and she sighed deeply, flicking her head back to knock them away. She was carrying a basket of laundry in her arms and wore a baggy sweatshirt with a long, woollen skirt. Her face was sans make-up and she wasn't wearing any jewellery apart from her wedding ring. Leon couldn't remember the last time he'd seen her that way.

Turning towards the front door as the bell rang twice again, his mother yelled back in the vague direction of the stairs, 'Leon! I heard you young man. Go back to bed, it's a school night!'

_Okay now __that__ I definitely remember._

Then she dropped the pile of laundry beside the door, kicking it to the side. His mother pursed her thin lips and peeked through the spy hole in the door. Her shoulders seeming to tense up as she spread her hands against the door at either side of her face. She pulled back, her fingers still pressed against the door as she hesitated. Worry lines etched their way onto her brow. Leon immediately pushed away from the railing and began to walk down the stairs towards her.

'Mom?' he called out hesitantly.

He had no idea what the hell he'd do if she heard him. He knew that this was far from real. But the feelings this illusion provoked in him were as genuine and powerful as a slap in the face. When he had almost reached the bottom of the stairs his mother seemed to snap to life, snatching her hands from the face of the door and rubbing them together. She used her right hand to unhook the latch on the door and pull it open a few inches, whilst the left reached around to smooth back her hair.

A shock of freezing night air breezed into the hallway when the door was opened. On the other side of the door stood two men in dark blue uniforms. Leon stopped so suddenly that he almost lost his footing and tumbled down the final few steps. His hand gripped the railing and his knuckles glowed white. His steady breaths shattered into sharp, urgent gasps that clawed at his throat. The sight of those tall, dour looking men grabbed his attention and shook a glimmer of recognition from the fog of this subconscious. He remembered this part. It was all so suddenly familiar but the relief he felt at seeing something he recognised soon withered into brittle dread and desperation. This was the only thing he remembered about this day. In fact, this was the only thing he really remembered clearly about his entire life before the age of seven.

'No...' Leon breathed as he began to back away from the door watching the first man reach into his jacket, 'Please no. No not again...'

'Ma'am, we're with the NYPD,' the man said holding his golden badge aloft, 'Are you Mrs Moira Kennedy?'

His mother stared at them evenly and straightened her shoulders, 'Yes. What's this about?'

'Is your husband a Mr Nathan Kennedy?' the second officer asked with such bland formality that it was obvious he knew the answer already.

She wrapped her arms around her body, embracing herself against the cold, her fingers twitching restlessly.

'What's happened to Nate?' she asked wearily, suspicious maybe that her time was being wasted somehow, 'Where is he?'

The first officer, a head shorter than his mother, seemed taken aback at her attitude. Even so, he phrased himself impeccably, using the same steady and neutral tone that Leon had once been taught to use in these situations, 'I'm sorry to inform you that your husband was involved in an altercation earlier tonight at a local drinking establishment.'

_What? Wait a minute..._

Leon's hand loosened on the railing and fell limp at his side as he took a step closer and listened intently, studying this from all angles.

_A bar? No, this isn't right. This isn't how it happened._

'What? Altercation? What kind of altercation? Where was he?' his mother shared his silent concerns, her reaction urgent, perplexed and fearful.

It was only after hearing her speak that Leon acknowledged openly to himself that this was how he felt; this was what that particular combination of words ('sorry', 'Nathan' and 'Altercation') had done to them both.

'He was at McMillan's bar about...four blocks away from here...' the second officer, older and with a broad set of shoulders, looked down at his pad.

The fact that he had to squint down at the chaotic scribble of his written notes irritated Leon to an almost irrational degree. Part of him could barely stand the fact that the man couldn't remember something so damn vital.

His mother smiled then, slowly, very nearly looking conceited. She raising her chin proudly and her arms fell from her body, resting at her hips, 'Well I think it's obvious that you're mistaken Officer. My husband doesn't drink.'

'Ma'am, the landlord positively identified him as a very regular customer. He'd been there almost every night this week. Do you know if he was meeting anyone there....?'

'No,' she replied, sparing no mercy when correcting him as though he was a lazy student. She glanced away impatiently, 'My husband does not drink. This has to be some kind of mistake.'

'Mrs Kennedy, we've double checked and this...'

She ignored him, 'Well I'm sure you have Officer, but are you aware that 'Kennedy' is a very popular name in this city? Right downstairs there are _three_ families with that name and we are always getting each other's mail-'

The second man pulled a small brown wallet from his pocket, testing its weight and flipping it open, 'Is this your husband's wallet Mrs Kennedy?'

She snatched it from his hands urgently, 'I don't.....It's....yes. It is...but...'

'This was found in his jacket pocket. His name is on his driver's license. Your husband was stabbed as he left the bar. We think that he knew his attacker as he didn't put up much of a struggle.'

Shaking her head so wildly that tendrils of golden hair fell over her face again, his mother protested, 'This is absurd. My husband does not frequent bars or get into fights. He was an officer in the army, he...'

'His injuries were fatal, Mrs Kennedy,' the first officer declared bluntly, his sympathy worn down by the woman's attitude and the ruthless slog of a nightshift in darkest winter.

His mother frowned for a moment, her eyes flicking from the men at her door and down at the wallet. She turned it over in her hands a few times before a small pile of cards, receipts and loose change slipped from its folds and settled silently onto the thickly padded carpets. It was soon followed by the wallet itself, its thin, brown leather now too much for the pinch of her frail fingers.

Her hands wrung the base of her neck as she stared at the mess in an almost confused state, 'I....I'm...sorry,' she muttered, but no one was sure if she was apologising for dropping the wallet or if she genuinely hadn't grasped a word of what the man had told her and wanted him to repeat himself.

The first officer stared at his older partner as if asking for the go-ahead to stoop and gather up the debris.

Before he could ask, the second cop spoke up a little louder than necessary, 'He died on his way to hospital about an hour ago. He bled out before the paramedics could...' he continued slowly, pacing out the words as he waited for a reaction, '...could stabilise him. I'm sorry for your loss.'

His mother shuddered, her hands flying to her face as her body began to tremble against a backlash of violent tears. Those tears never surfaced, they just rattled around inside her, loosening her heart from its moorings.

Leon closed his eyes and sank roughly to the floor. He buried his head in his shaking hands as teardrops edged their way down the bridge of his nose. He could taste their salt in the back of his mouth as they began to bleed through him. He was inhaling grief.

This was all wrong. To think about this again was enough, it was the bottom line; but to see it twisted beyond recognition enraged him so much that he couldn't breathe. His father was not a drinker. His father had died on his way home from work. He had been stabbed as he'd tried to stop a mugging. He was a hero. This wasn't right. Why the hell would he dream up something like this? Why would he do this to himself?

He was faintly conscious that his mother was talking. She sounded muffled and distant.

'Is...is this all?' she inquired with a parody of politeness as she ducked down to grab the wallet from the floor, 'I don't want to keep you from...'

The two men exchanged that look; that look of open disbelief that this woman could provide nothing more than this mute reaction to the death of her husband.

'But Mrs Kennedy,' the taller man lowered his voice, 'Wouldn't you need the name of the hospital....?'

Moira Kennedy waved her hand impatiently as she busied herself with re-stuffing her husband's wallet, 'Community General?'

'Yes that's right Ma'am....we can escort you....'

'That won't be necessary,' she smiled tightly, her eyes red and swollen, 'If you'll excuse me. It is late and I-'

'But we'll need you to come with us to formally identify the body.'

'It's late,' she replied sounding sickly amused at the suggestion, 'I will....I will go down first thing in the morning after I've dropped my son at school.'

She walked towards them, her hand fumbling for the doorknob.

'Mrs Kennedy...'

As she closed the door, tucking the men out of her home and back into the cold, she murmured, 'Goodnight.'

She was already on her knees by the time the door had shut and the automatic snap of the bolt had sounded.

'Mom?' Leon whispered, moving rise from the step using both hands as leverage to push him upwards.

However, he didn't make it, deciding instead to remain where he was for now; his helplessness feeding his inertia. It was mortifying for most children to watch their parents cry, but for him it was simply bizarre. He wanted to approach her, to comfort her, but there was this impulse telling him that this woman wasn't his mother. Because by simple logic, if she really _was_ his mother then the man that had spent his nights huddled in a bar under a mist of cigarette smoke, who had been too lost in the bottom of a bottle to recoil from the sight of death...that man would be his father.

_No. This isn't me. Not mine. I don't want this._

He looked up to find his mother's red face staring at the landing high above his head. Twisting around he glanced up to find his younger self at the top of the stairs. The child's face was ashen with shock and his bottom lip quivered as his wide eyes began to glisten in the cold light.

'Leon....?' his mother called up to her son.

But the boy didn't answer her. He turned away immediately and marched back to his room, slamming the door hard behind him. Leon clenched his teeth as a fierce sense of panic he'd long forgotten began to squeeze down on his chest. Jumping to his feet, he tried desperately to think of a way to escape his own subconscious. It was like trying to outrun your own shadow. But the thoughts returned. The ones that used to crowd in on him during the loneliest moments of his youth. Those dark, nonsensical voices; wrong, persistent and cruel telling him that if he'd been a better son his father would have stayed home that night. His father would still be alive.

_Wake up. This isn't real! Come on Kennedy. Just wake up._

The sounds of his mother's sobs became louder and louder as he braced himself against a torrent of sensations born of memoires he should never have dared to touch again. He closed his eyes tightly, the tears still squeezing their way through.

_Stop it! Just fucking stop it and let me wake up!_

A dizzying reel of grief began to slide past his eyes. His father's funeral. The relentless swathe of grey cloud. The way he'd buried his face in his mother's black dress as she'd stared forward impassive and distant. The featureless faces of his father's friends as they had shook his hand and told him what a brave boy he was and that he was the head of the family from now on and that his father was with God and that he had to take care of his mother and his baby sister and...

'Stop it!' Leon screamed, his voice shattering the dream like a fist against glass.

The words echoed around him, swirling like a whirlpool till he was almost inhaling them, drowning inside his own screams. His eyes flew open and he almost stumbled, his feet skidding against gravel and a loose patch of dirt. Steadying himself Leon span around, the breath he'd been holding threatening to blast a fist-sized hole through his chest. He wasn't in his old home anymore. His mother, the cops, the cold breeze of the New York night. It was gone. What it had been replaced with was perhaps far, far worse, but still there was this deep and unmistakable feeling of relief.

The novelty of it wore off after a minute or so.

_Don't be like that. Stop being a coward and just focus on getting out of here._

He was in a large cell, about thirty feet by forty-five, a concrete box with a high ceiling. The walls were dark grey and heavily eroded, the ground was bare dirt as hard and lifeless as rock. The place was empty except for him. There was a single source of light that blinked though a tiny square hold high up on the far wall. Moonlight trickled in and fell like a diamond carpet on a tiny patch of ground. It must be late at night, but the air was thick with rancid warmth as if the very walls had soaked in decades of rotten mould, blood and human waste. He recognised that smell.

Leon bent forward gripping his knees like a runner who'd just burst through the finish line. As he did so a wave of nausea fell over him and an aching sensation pierced his forehead. He lifted his hand to his face and found it sticky, caked in dry blood and dirt. He was wounded.

As he moved to stand, he noticed that his frame felt heavier, more restricted. Glancing down Leon noticed that he was wearing a tactical outfit, thick body armour, empty gun holsters and black gloves. The front of his uniform was superficially torn and covered in black soot that smelled like gun powder. His fingertips were bruised and his throat felt like he'd just swallowed a cactus.

_Come on Kennedy, think. You're wearing tactical gear, you're disarmed and you're injured. Damn. Do dreams usually hurt like this?_

He was obviously a prisoner. There was a single door to the room. It was made of steel, partially rusted but still several inches thick. Leon immediately ran to the door and threw his body up against it. It scarcely even shook.

'Hey, open up!' he shouted as loud as he could and struck the door with his fists.

No answer.

Running his hands around the edges of the door he searched for any possible weakness. But Leon soon relented, realising that he'd have just as much chance breaking through the concrete walls as he would this door. He was about to turn away when a faint layer of paint at the corner of the door caught his eye. He scratched away at the grime with his fingernails. Then he ran his hand along the circular design, its red and white flakes of colour gleaming new as if he'd awoken some kind of creature from a deep slumber. It was the Umbrella logo grinning back at him, flashing its white teeth and blood-red gums.

Swearing as loud as his aching throat would allow, Leon turned away from the door. He approached the window and, much like his younger self through the bars of his sister's crib, he stood on his toes and stared out. Flat land stretched for miles beyond but the night hid any other defining details. In the distance he could make out a few searchlights scanning the ground and revealing the sharp outlines of squat, narrow buildings and passageways. It looked like a facility of some kind, but none he'd ever seen before.

He tugged at the bars of the window but they were solid and thickly entrenched into the concrete frame. And besides this, the window was far too narrow to allow him an escape route into the pitch black on the other side. And really what was the point? This was insane. He was seriously beginning to believe that he hated himself. That was the only possible explanation for dreams like this. They had to be dreams. Or perhaps amnesia. He had taken several blows to the head over the past couple of days. He'd also played host to a slimy parasitic insect that had tried to burst through his stomach Alien-style. He wasn't exactly in perfect health.

And with the Umbrella logo just metres away there was a chance that this was just some kind of elaborate deception. Surely something like this wasn't Umbrella's style. What the hell could they hope to gain from him? As things stood Leon knew nothing about the government's plans against Umbrella and from the look of it that wasn't going to change anytime soon. Once his colleagues realised that he was missing, all of Leon's access codes to any sensitive information would be erased. It was standard procedure.

'Maybe you're just crazy Leon. It's been a long time coming. Perhaps you've just finally lost it,' he muttered to himself out loud as he gazed towards the pale face of the moon outside, 'Ever think of that?'

'I don't think you're going to get out of here with that attitude.'

Leon turned, his back slamming into the wall behind him as he raised his hands to defend himself. He glared into the shadowy corners, his eyes tracing the shape of a large, lone figure that hadn't been there just seconds before. His hair was blonde, not golden, but a dirty, gritty colour laced with grey and his eyes were framed by rows of shallow wrinkles that betrayed his age. He had to be about forty at least, though he looked even older in this low light. The guy was about six feet tall; his arms were well built and folded across his broad chest. He'd obviously taken care of himself, but Leon was confident that the odds would be in his favour if this guy tried anything. He had a pronounced limp, his right foot scuffling gracelessly across the dirt when he moved.

'Don't be so paranoid. You're quite safe. Relatively speaking,' the voice continued casually. It was deep, husky, masculine. It had an edge to it, as though this strange, impossible addition to the nightmare had known him for years. The ease and friendliness of his tone was proud and obvious, but it was also damn patronising.

'My name's Kennedy, I'm a federal agent. Who are you? How'd you get in here?' Leon demanded, his feet firmly planted on the ground, 'Answer me!'

The man took a clumsy step forwards into the soft shaft of moonlight, it lit him up immediately, crawling its way up his frame, revealing a familiar, lazy smirk on his face and illuminating the gentle dusting of stubble on his square chin. A prominent bump curved around the bridge of his nose indicating that it had once been badly broken. He was wearing a plain grey T-shirt and loose slacks that covered thick, sturdy, bomb-proof, army issue boots.

'Leon...' the man lifted his hands in a calming gesture; his fingers spread wide, 'This must be...weird, maybe even a little frightening for you, but I need you to calm down for me. Just hear me out, all right Son?'

_Yeah sure. Whatever you say..._

Leon's lips parted, more than eager to make that very caustic reply. But once he'd processed every detail, his mind went blank as if someone had knocked him out cold. His eyes grew wide and he felt his cheeks sag. Staggering forwards, his eyes roaming over the man before him, Leon circled the room, his mouth slack and his tongue a lead weight in his jaw.

_Oh this just keeps on getting better and better. I'm crazy, no doubt about it._

'What's wrong?' the man asked, rolling his tongue along the inside of his cheek as if swallowing back a tide of laughter, 'I thought you missed your old man.'

'Oh shit. I don't believe this. Dad? Dad!' Leon cried, coming to a stop in front of him so abruptly that he almost tripped over his own feet, 'I don't understand... First that and now this? What's happening to me?'

Nathan Kennedy rolled his lazy gaze around the cell and shrugged, 'That could take some explaining.'

'I'm not going anywhere.'

'True,' his father nodded, his grin was gone but the good-humoured spark in his eyes seemed to grow. He became wistful, inspecting his son like an old family photograph, 'I can't believe how much you've grown...You've got your granddad's eyes, you know. Other than that I'd say you're a chip off the old block.'

Leon looked up at him, a sardonic twist on his lips, 'Oh yeah? You bring me all this way to exchange pleasantries? You could have just called or doesn't the afterlife have decent phone reception.'

'You've got a smart mouth,' Nathan's voice hardened making no attempt to dress his criticism up with light humour.

'Well it's been a tough couple of days and if you...whoever the hell you are...wanted to help me then you'd start giving me answers. Am I going to wake up anytime soon? Or is it real?' Leon snapped harshly, 'What the hell is going on with me?!'

'You'll get answers, but you just need to be patient-'

'Or what? You'll send me to my room? I'm so tired of everyone else knowing more than I do and feeding me crap about it being too complicated or it not being the right time to tell me.'

Nathan stepped towards his son, 'Why did you become a government agent?'

'What?'

'Why did you become...'

'I heard you,' he turned away and threw his arms up in the air in irritation, 'Why is this relevant? I'm the one asking the questions not you.'

'Hey! Will you quit your whining and give me a chance? This is hard for me too.'

'Hard?' Leon glared at him, 'Fuck you! You don't know "hard". You're a hallucination.'

With a sneer, Nathan launched towards his son, grabbed him by the arm and propelled him against the nearest wall. The solid bulk of his body made up for the weakness of his leg. Training and skill had enabled him to compensate for it.

'I'm as real as you are right now and if you want me to prove it then I will!' Nathan growled his pale eyes weary and haunted, a deep well of loss and anguish that made Leon's gaze falter from his face.

Dream or not this guy was seemingly human. His expression was bleak. But he didn't smell of death. There was a vibrancy to him like his soul was still beating beyond the frozen wastes of death and across the decades of distance between them.

Instinctively, Leon seized his father's wrist and broke his hold, forcing him away.

Backing off begrudgingly and digging his fingers into his hair in a gesture very familiar to his young son, Nathan groaned, 'Damn it. I knew that I wouldn't be good at this, I just knew it!'

Leon's brow furrowed and his mouth twitched, 'Dad? It's really you isn't it? What's going on? Where am I?'

'You're not in any real danger.'

'And that makes this okay?' he scoffed.

'Why are you being such an ass about this?' his father asked, shrugging dismissively.

'Are you yelling at me because I object to being kidnapped?'

'Drop the attitude. I'm not your enemy and I'm the last person you'd want to piss off. I wish I could tell you, I really do,' he sighed and roughly rubbed his temples with his fingers, 'But it's something that you're going to have to work out for yourself in time. It'd help if you answered my question first. Why did you become a government agent?'

Leon pursed his lips together, pretending to give the question some serious thought. And then he smirked, 'I thought I'd get a rocket powered car and poisoned dart pen.'

The joke fell flat.

'Why'd you think I joined up?' he continued passionately, gesturing with his hands as he shook the words out into the open air, 'I went to hell and back in a single day. I was damaged goods and I'm not saying that to be melodramatic. It's a fact. What? Did you want me to become an accountant or a realtor or a mechanic? What the hell do you want from me? Men like me aren't geared for normal jobs. We've seen too much to pretend that life can be normal. Surely you understand that. When you came back from the army after your injury you went from civilian job to civilian job without really finding a good fit.'

'Thanks for the history lesson kid,' Nathan interjected impatiently, 'But we're not here to talk about that. All this is about you. Not me.'

'Really? Then why did I dream that you died from a drunken bar fight rather than trying to save a guy's life like Mom told me?' Leon asked shakily.

'Because...well I guess you'll have to ask your mother about that,' Nathan was so earnest in his reply that it took his son a moment to realise that he was simply dodging the question, 'She loves you Leon and she didn't want you, or anyone else for that matter, knowing the truth. She was ashamed of me and had been for a long time even before the accident.'

As he stood there, his scepticism still deeply rooted, Leon felt as though his heart had been skewered and plucked from his chest with a rusty knife, 'What the hell, Dad? "Accident?" You can't be serious! You....you left us alone night after night to go out drinking?'

His father hesitated, his gaze sinking as shame dragged his gaze into the dirt, 'All right. Yes. Listen...there's more to it than that-'

'Sure there is. Who did that to you? Who...who killed you?'

'That's not important right now...'

'There is nothing else that is more important to me right now!' Leon almost screamed, the sheer volume bringing the cry to life, swelling into a sound that flew between the walls of the cell like an angry ghost, 'How could you do that to us? Hannah grew up without a father! I grew up without a father!'

'You had Alan.'

'Alan wasn't our father. You were! There's no excuse for what you did... for leaving us like that. I looked up to you-'

'You looked up to a myth. And don't blame me for that. It's the real reason you became a cop isn't it? You wanted to feel closer to me didn't you? For crying out loud Leon, if you'd just joined the army things would be a damn sight easier right now,' Nathan groaned in exasperation and closed his eyes, 'A long time ago you realised that helping people is part of who you are and you have to understand that this isn't about the past anymore. Don't let my mistakes hold you back from what you can achieve beyond a life of violence and death. Something is coming...something big. It'll test everything you know about yourself and the people in your life so you need to be ready. But you can't do this by yourself. You aren't meant to walk this path alone. You were never meant to be alone.'

'What does that mean? I don't understand...'

'You will,' his father assured him firmly, looking him in the eye, 'You're a smart kid.'

'So is this a dream?'

'Yes. It's...' Nathan considered the question for a moment as if he'd just been asked to find the square root of five hundred, 'It's a test.'

Leon pressed his fists against his damp forehead and strived to control his manic heart rate. But seeing his father again after all this time only stoked the fires that were burning through his paper-thin resolve and turning his sanity to ash. He hadn't felt five years old in a very long time but that's how he felt right now; lost, afraid and alone. Just after he had finally gotten a firm grasp of things, the planet had changed its axis once again and threatened to throw him off, sending him spinning into the darkness. But he was so tired of playing catch-up and chasing ghosts in circles around the world.

'A test huh?' Leon repeated slowly, rolling the word distastefully around his tongue, 'I still don't believe that this is happening. I just can't afford to believe this, not now. I needed you Dad. I needed you and you weren't there for me. Who the hell are you to come to me and act like a father now? Don't you dare tell me where I'm going wrong when you know nothing about me!'

The words span around them both, thick in the air, soaking into the walls. His father seemed furious for a moment, his jaw rock solid and a pulse slamming hard through the swollen vein in his neck. He squared his shoulders and scowled at him. However the look was nothing but a distant memory when Nathan Kennedy exhaled with a soft rush and replied with restraint, 'Okay. I understand. But you have to know that I'm not leaving you this time, no matter how much you kick and scream. I'm here right now. So you better start getting used to me.'

His son was dubious, 'That a threat?'

'It's friendly advice.'

Leon looked him square in the eye and leaned back against the cell wall, 'You're a stubborn jackass.'

Nathan shrugged, 'Family trait.'

Despite his sour temper, Leon chuckled and watched in fascination as his father's reluctant smile became a faultless mirror of his own. But the grins vanished quickly, the hearts of the pair not nearly strong enough to hold them in place.

Without warning the cell walls shook, dust rising from their cracked concrete faces, and a siren began shrieking from outside. Pushing away from the wall Leon ran to the window to find the entire facility ablaze with electric warning lights that set the night sky alight with wild colour. The noise was followed by shouts and screams as gunfire erupted and doors slammed shut. Guard dogs began to snarl in concert with the uproar.

_What's got them all excited?_

The sounds were getting gradually nearer and his trained ear could detect it clearly. There was a problem and it was closing in on his position. Leon's eyes began searching for a possible weapon or vantage point as his father stood still and unruffled in the centre of the room. Moments later the gunshots arrived outside the cell door and a gathering storm of voices clashed and thundered in a language he didn't understand. It sounded Near Eastern, perhaps Arabic, and though he couldn't make out a single word, the volume, the urgency, the blood lust, the fear: that was a universal language. People were dying outside and more would soon follow.

'Leon.'

He looked back at his father impatiently, 'What? I guess you're not going to tell me what's going on out there.'

'It's nothing you can't handle,' Nathan replied with confidence.

'You think you know what's best for me don't you?'

'Only _you_ know what's best for you Leon. I'm just here to give you a heads up.'

Leon glanced at the door once again as the voices crept nearer and nearer towards him.

'But you should remember...' his father continued behind him, his voice composed and careful for once as though he were reciting something he'd learned years before, 'Faith is something that you see with your heart, not with your eyes. Just don't forget that whatever you do, okay?'

Leon glanced back but found the cell as empty as it had been the moment he had landed inside. His father...or at least the image of his father was gone. He had no time to even speculate what he'd been talking about or what anyone could hope to gain from this subterfuge. Either way escape was his only option. Then he'd investigate. Leon was sick of playing a game where everyone knew the rules except him.

Suddenly another cascade of gunfire erupted outside. It sounded like an assault-rifle of some kind. Razor-sharp and fluent, the bursts expertly silenced the chaos of the screams and frenzied machinegun blasts. Men roared. Instructions were delivered but their meaning was lost in the madness. Reason could sink so easily when people fought for control. A final animalistic growl followed and something began to pound against the other side of the door.

They were here. They were trying to get inside his cell. Either they were after him or trying to escape something far worse.

Leon ran to door and stood to one side, his body pressed flat against the wall and his chest heaving with an electric burst of adrenaline. The steel door stood firm against the onslaught from outside. Bullets clattered against the frame, light flashing from the under the tiny gap by the floor.

Then the noises were gone, expelled from the air by a final, booming gunshot. The cell fell silent. There was nothing left but the soft whisper of death. Leon knew better than to let himself relax.

Seconds passed before he heard anything else.

Footsteps.

Someone was walking towards his cell. The slow, measured footfalls stopped outside the door. With a clang, someone wrenched the bolt free and gave the door a shove. The metal slab swung open on its hinges.

Leon held his breath as a black-gloved hand clasping a heavy handgun slid into view. Without hesitation he grabbed the assailant's wrist and twisted. The gun half-slipped from their fingers. Throwing his body forwards, Leon shoved the figure towards the wall behind him using his body weight to knock the breath from the intruder's lungs. His surprise at the light build of his opponent was surpassed only by the shock of their knee colliding with his abdomen.

His vision swam was he struggled to gain control of his headache as well as the writhing figure he held at bay. In the sickly pale moonlight Leon was able to see a little more of his opponent, for what little good that. He wasn't exactly interested in exchanging first names and shaking hands with this guy. However, he could tell that he was dealing with a professional and he adjusted his combat style accordingly, using greater force. His attacker wore a gasmask that obscured their face and a padded, black combat outfit with a thick, bullet-proof vest.

Leon slammed the figure's slender wrist against the back wall but the stubborn weapon stayed in its owners grasp as if it had been welded to the glove. Then the figure thrashed wildly throwing Leon off balance and making him stumble backwards. But still, he didn't let go, his fingers squeezing hard against his attacker's arm, twisting it violently. Finally the handgun toppled from their grasp and onto the floor. Leon kicked it out of reach and it skidded smoothly towards the end of the cell.

'Who the hell are you? What do you want from me?' Leon's voice was rough from exertion.

Without a reply the figure flew forwards and smacked their head hard against Leon's brow. It was the speed of the blow, not its strength that sent Leon tumbling to the floor. Before he could recover, his adversary reached up and tore off the mask, shaking free a curtain of glossy, black hair.

'Ada!' he cried, the response torn so easily from him that he winced.

And there she stood, her hair mysteriously an inch or two longer than it had been just the day before. Her lips were painted a velvety red rather than a tender pink. But the differences only heightened his awareness of everything that had stayed the same. Her pale green eyes brazenly stared him down, her cheeks were glowing with exertion and her lips flirted with a sensuously dangerous smile. Sliding a hand along her thigh she grasped her hip and tilted her head to the side as if preparing to either scold him or simply laugh with delight. But she did neither. She just pursed her lips together and stared, her gaze sliding beneath the edge of his collar like a balmy breeze and making him breathless.

The sirens outside were almost hushed by her silent inspection. He stared for twice as long as he had intended and three times as long as his dignity could afford. Reaching up to his face he rubbed the sore spot on his brow and cuttingly looked away to recollect the nerve she'd so easily disarmed him of.

'I see you've learned even less about how to handle a woman,' she murmured, her breath still a little shallow as though she hadn't quite been able to catch it yet.

He ignored her. He'd had enough sparring for one night. At his silence, Ada's face remained composed; ever a facade of amusement as she plucked the black gloves from her hands and let them fall to the floor. She may as well have kept the gas mask on for all her expression told him. But then for the tiniest of seconds her gaze seemed to falter and leap to his head, his chest or the wall behind him; he barely stopped to question why. He wasn't in the mood.

She slowly stalked towards him, her hips rolling ever so slightly as she knelt before him and stared intently at his face, her exquisite eyebrows curling upwards fondly. In her presence he became more aware of his body than he had ever been in his adult life; his dry lips, his abnormally loud heartbeat that he was sure she could hear and the awkward sprawling of his legs as she almost straddled him. Their separation of mere hours felt instead like many long years. His heart folded in on itself as they breathed the same air. Leon swallowed hard and leaned away from her, but she reached forward and touched his forehead with the tips of her cool fingers anyway. He flinched and she pulled away without comment.

'What are you doing here?' Leon asked, expecting no real answer, just another reason to be angry with her.

So it had come to this. He was doomed to forever retrace their continuous, exhausting dance even in his sleep.

_She has something to do with this. She's the reason I'm here._

'I thought that you'd be happy to see me,' Ada replied coolly, 'Or would you rather have that fellow out there for company?'

Craning his head around to peer out of the door and into the dark hallway beyond Leon saw the bullet riddled corpse of a bulky, muscled man with waves of dark hair. But from there the human qualities stopped. His white eyes glowed through the murky fog and his flesh was sliding loosely off his bones, tearing like foil. Most of his fingertips were bruised and covered in blood as if someone had torn off his fingernails. He must have been the creature trying to get into his cell until Ada had taken him out.

'Zombies?' he muttered to himself.

'What else? The scientists in this facility have grown increasingly irrational over the past few months or perhaps they're just overambitious. In this business it's hard to make a separation between the two. They're all over the compound but I managed to fight off the ones around the cell block. Several T-virus specimens have escaped and this place has gone into lock down,' Ada stood and seized her gun from the floor slipping it into its holster on her thigh, 'Wesker's guards have either been infected or are fighting a losing battle as we speak. And though this place is an interesting social study I think we're better off far, far away right now. A chopper will be meeting us in a little over ten minutes, but it'll be leaving three minutes later whether we're on it or not.'

Leon almost sighed with relief before his common sense plummeted back to earth and bounced several times knocking his optimism into last week.

_A chopper. Convenient._

How do you get someone to trust you? You save them, you jump to their side and if there's nothing to save them from, then you makeit up. There was something very wrong with this, or probably just with him. The Las Plagas parasite had been able to make him hallucinate and it's no stretch of the imagination to conclude that Wesker would be proficient in psychological manipulation.

She pulled her assault rifle from around her shoulders and tossed it onto his lap, 'Here. You'll need this. It's not pretty out there as you can imagine.'

'Why are you helping me?' Leon asked wearily as he struggled to his feet using the nearby wall for support, 'You know how I got here. You do, don't you?'

She flicked her wrist serenely and turned towards the door, 'Later. We need to go.'

'I'm not going anywhere until you talk to me.'

The distant sound of gunshots and alarm bells were making him restless. His body was screaming at him to move, but he wasn't going until he got a few answers.

Ada span on her high-heeled boots and scowled at him, 'Are you insane? We have to leave here now.'

'Why "we" all of a sudden? You work for Wesker and I sure as hell don't have anything to offer you. Why are you keeping me here?'

Rather than reply with frustration or an icy, belittling smile, Ada simply narrowed her eyes at him, 'Leon? I don't understand...'

He rolled his eyes and pushed off the wall to walk towards her, 'You know exactly what I'm talking about. You handed Wesker the Las Plagas sample without even giving a shit over what he'll do with it. But as long as you're "far, far away" I guess it doesn't matter to you. I'm not helping you do that ever again, do you understand me?'

She stared back at him unwaveringly as he approached; her eyes glinting like sun-kissed glass. Leon became even more tense and irate with every step when he saw the seemingly insignificant effect his words were having on her. It made him feel a little indignant and more than a little foolish.

'Enough,' she interrupted him seamlessly, 'Spain was almost two years ago. Why are you still bringing it up? We're on the same side and I thought we'd come to an understanding. What the hell did Wesker do to you?'

_Two years? The same side?_

There was no question that a fragile corner of his heart believed her. It whispered and waved its tiny hands but he ignored it. He was tired and the sight of Ada's smirk and her arms crossed tightly over her chest was blinding him. He was back in Spain, the thin breeze lifting the heavy drapes and making her red dress curl invitingly around her smooth, pale legs, she was tossing her head with disinterest and fleeing into the moonlight, disappearing until she saw fit to reveal herself again.

This felt so wrong. It had to be some kind of set up, he was sure of it. His stubbornness took hold of the driving seat making compromise an increasingly distant spot on the horizon.

'You're lying to me,' Leon muttered as he came to a stop before her, 'You're lying. I don't know how you did all this... my home and my mother and my dad... But I'm not falling for it. You know I _never_ thought you'd stoop this low. Guess the joke's on me again, huh?'

'Falling for what?' she hissed as he turned away from her and stalked towards the door.

'I'm not letting you or Wesker pull my strings anymore,' he called back as he walked out of the cell, 'I'm getting out of here on my own.'

'Leon!' she called as she ran out after him.

But he was unmoved as he continued to stride away from her. Clenching his fists he tried to shake free his awareness of her, but the pounding of his feet on the concrete floor failed to drown her out. The hallway of the prison complex was submerged in darkness, shadows sliding over the grey walls like ripples. Tiny slots that served as windows let in frail beams of light. All he could make out were bullet holes and streaks of blood. Three zombies and four seemingly human and uninfected individuals were slumped against walls with either teeth marks or bullets decorating their otherwise smooth skin.

Leon's nose wrinkled in disgust as he saw the macabre arrangement. Elaborate deception or something else? He stopped in his tracks, forcing himself to ignore the sound of Ada's footsteps as she caught up with him. He crouched beside one of the bodies and inspected it. There was no pulse, no soft swelling of the chest. Nothing but the rancid smell of moistened flesh... Would Wesker do something like this just to trap him? It dawned on him that he'd made a mistake.

Ada came to a stop behind him, he could see her slender profile out of the corner of his eye but he was too lost in thought to even think of turning around.

'About three months ago Wesker began slowly leaking a new strain of the T-virus into the base's water supply to monitor the effects of long-term exposure. The outbreak occurred almost over night. This military base is nearly impenetrable, which makes it the perfect for isolated experiments,' Ada's voice was as unutterably sombre as a winter's morning; grey, snapping with cold but with that odd brush of softness he'd always associated with her, 'Now stop being so pig-headed. The extraction point is in the other direction.'

He stood in silence and briskly nodded his apology. Suddenly a low moan slithered through the air, wet smacking of lips against bone and the snapping of teeth followed in the undercurrent.

The sharp tapping of claws against the floor made him grab the rifle from his back. He gave Ada and grim look and glanced back to where they had come from. Her lips twisted in recognition of his mute suggestion, but her expression was still tight with aggravation and her exotic eyes narrowed with distain. He'd never seen her so openly pissed off before. She was going to make him pay for this later and he knew it.

Before he could contemplate how whipped he truly was, a hulking wolf-like creature emerged from behind a distant corner. Tendrils of flesh dangled from its slack jaw as its beady eyes locked with theirs. Its tongue slapped against the roof of its cavernous mouth as it sniffed the air and gave a sickly, gut-wrenching cough. It was twice the size of a Doberman, its musculature inflated and bursting through its thin skin and tangled black fur. Another canine followed close behind it, its fur was a deep brown and its eyes ice white and cold. Flashing its huge, grey teeth the first of the three roared spraying blood tinted saliva onto the floor. Whilst the sound still hung in the air it pounced towards them, its feet barely scraping the ground as it charged.

'Ada, get back!' Leon shouted as he raised the rifle and fired.

The gunfire did nothing but slow it down as the other creature joined its ranks and scuttled towards them.

'This way. Hurry!' Ada called to him as she turned and sprinted towards the end of corridor.

Leon immediately turned and followed her, the dogs sniffing at his heels. But all too soon the first of them caught up with him and leapt at his heels, sinking its teeth cleanly into his right boot. He yelled and fell to the floor, his knee breaking his fall and bruising badly in the process. Knocked off balance the dog loosened its hold. Pressing the end of his rifle into the hound's snout, Leon pulled the trigger, the bullets ripping through its skull and sending it skidding on its back across the room. It left a trail of puss at it rolled away, its hairs matted and sticking together in clumps. The thickness of Leon's boots had protected him from being bitten but the crushing clamp of its jaw had badly damaged his ankle. He sucked in a deep, breath fetid air and brushed the diagnosis away.

_It's nothing. Just a scratch. Get up!_

Looking back he saw the second of the dogs closing in on him. Digging his fingers into the floor, Leon propelled his body upwards, gritting his teeth and fixing his eyes on the distance where Ada was running towards him.

'No. Ada, just go!' he screamed as he turned to fire again, his right leg almost buckling under him.

Ada reached him and began firing her handgun at the creature. Once again, the damage inflicted was minimal but it slowed the animal down enough to give them a head start. Leon grabbed Ada's arm and pulled her along with him. Without protest she followed him as they dashed towards the end of the hallway where the path turned sharply to the left and revealed a tall, silver door with an electronic lock.

Slamming his palm on the door controls, Leon ducked inside behind Ada and they both backed away as the hatch was slowly, achingly lowered closed, sealing shut just inches from the dog's blood soaked nose. It scratched at the floor outside and gave a haunting howl.

Ada gasped for air, her body tilting slightly at the waist. Leon could practically feel his cheeks burning under her smouldering fury but he stepped away from her to take a look around and make himself a little more useful. It was a warehouse, impoverished in terms of cargo but big and sturdy. There were only half a dozen shipping crates and the nearest of those were bathed in dirt. One of them had an elegant train of Arabic script written through the grime presumably by someone's finger. Leon indulged in a weak smile imagining that it was the Middle Easter equivalent of 'wash me!'

Wiping the film of sweat from his top lip with the back of his hand, Leon tried to piece together a sentence that could make amends without making him the fool. He couldn't remember the last time he'd let his pride dictate his actions to such an extent that he became a blind man in a minefield.

_Next time you feel like getting on your high horse Kennedy, just don't do it._

He heard Ada's footsteps behind him but he didn't turn around. Still, he could feel her gaze like a fist at his back.

'I came all this way for you and you alone,' she murmured dangerously as she strutted past him, 'Don't you dare pull a stunt like that again or I'll shoot you myself.'

Leon stiffened. The threat barely registered, but the tortured strain to her voice made his shoulders hunch upwards. His hands ached to touch her and reassure her that he got it. His anger withered to an empty husk. He wished he could be baffled by his behaviour but he knew the reason for it. He was still washed out and shaken by everything that had happened in Spain. Whatever this was, dream or fancy ruse, it had dug its claws into already fresh wounds.

Ada walked on towards the exit doors, barely sparing a look back at him. Cursing himself under his breath he followed her, his eyes fixed on her tense, rigid back as she sauntered boldly through the warehouse, her head moving leisurely from side to side as she took in the deserted room. When they were within a few metres of the rear shutters Leon felt a faint groan ripple through the ground and up through his boots. The doors on one of the containers at the far end of the room squealed as it arched on its hinges, slamming with a boom against the edge of the storage trunk and rousing a cascade of dirt and sand to flow from the top of the box to the floor.

'Ada, wait a minute. Do you feel that?'

The left exit door whined as it flew open, its rusted, steel facade crashed into the adjacent wall and breaking away from its moorings. It slammed face-first into the floor. Another of the ungainly, hulking soldiers stumbled through the hole that it had left behind. His arms were riddled with bullet holes and his shaven head crowned with bite marks. One of his eyes was missing and the eye socket leaked thick trails of oily blood. Its remaining eye was trained on them both and it began to lurch forwards, its arms held aloft.

Without hesitation, Ada raised her handgun and began to fire. But something caught Leon's eye. Tacked onto the worn leather belt of the undead solider sat a grenade. Its pin was missing.

Without sparing a second to even curse out loud, Leon lunged forwards and grabbed Ada's shoulders. She yelped indignantly as he threw her towards the nearest of the large crates and covered her body with his. Before their bodies kissed the floor, the grenade detonated and blew the soldier in two, splitting him down the middle and cleaving his arms at their joints. Heavy lumps of debris pummelled his back as Leon held onto Ada, folding her against him and shielding her from the explosion. A thick tidal wave of smoke and flesh enveloped them, soot and ash clogging their throats. The blast's scalding breath blistered their skin and hurled their world into the fire.

---

His scream was still escaping his lips when his eyes opened. Moving too fast to keep control of his body, Leon's legs became tangled in the sheets and he was sent hurtling over the side of the bed. He grunted as his body collided with the hard floor and his head smacked against the bedside cabinet. Clamping his mouth shut to lock his scream away, Leon clambered onto his knees and clasped his throat in a desperate bid to breathe again.

Throwing his head frantically from side to side, he realised that he wasn't in that base anymore. He was in the chateaux with its heavy drapes, peeling paint and hefty iron beds. The lick of the knife wound along his cheek confused him. His left thigh felt like it'd been bitten, his head ached and his shoulders were rusty. As his twinned vision merged into one he wasn't sure where they'd come from.

Why wasn't his ankle fractured or his flesh singed?

Leon sighed and leaned back against the side of the bed, his head lolling against the mattress edge as he stared blankly at the window. His chest felt parched and rough, his lungs scraping against the jagged face of his ribs as they flapped against a sudden intake of air. He snatched up the sleeve of his shirt and found his skin slightly bruised, but there was no sign of the burning sensation that still tingled along his body.

He could still smell that explosion. He could still feel Ada's fingers clutching at his waist as he held her, her ruby nails branding the skin under the hem his shirt. Doubling over and burying his head between his knees Leon swallowed back a sudden rise of acidic bile from his stomach. His forehead was damp and his throat constricted as though he'd held his head under saltwater for hours. His shoulders and legs were trembling. Digging his fingers into his hair he slumped forwards again.

That was one hell of a dream. He was in pieces; a little of him here, a little of him there. The shards of his self were migrating towards each other again, but the bonds between his mind and his body had been broken. He was damaged just like he had been in that hut in Spain. His skin was itching to fly off of his trembling bones and his blood was boiling. Except where that nightmare had squeezed six real hours into what had felt like a couple of seconds, this _experience_ had forced him to live out hours in just a few minutes at most. It was still dark outside just as it had been when he'd pressed his aching head to the thin, lank pillows.

'Ashley...' Leon muttered softly as he kicked away the sheets and jumped to his feet.

Dragging himself towards the door he grabbed the handle and yanked it open. He backed away to find Jean Dumont on the other side. The small, beetle-browed man carried a gun and a fierce expression, but lowered both at the sight of him. Leon wobbled backwards on his heel and grabbed the doorframe for support.

'Leon?' Jean gaped at him before tossing a look over his shoulder into the empty bedroom, 'I heard screaming from your room-'

'Where's Ashley?' he replied urgently, 'Is she okay?'

'Yes. Of course. Ashley is in her room,' Jean shrugged impatiently, 'I'm surprised she can sleep through those noises you were making. What were you doing in there? You look like crap.'

His shoulders slumping in relief Leon smirked with as much gall as he could muster at such an early hour, 'It's nothing. I was just seeing if any of you guys were paying attention.'

Jean stared back at him silently and reached around his drooping gut to slip his gun into his belt, 'So....what? Are you trying to give an old man a stroke?'

His efforts at humour were feeble indeed, 'I'm sorry...' he added suddenly, 'I didn't mean to...'

Wrapping his thick fingers around Leon's forearm, Jean gave him a short nod, 'It's no problem. Try to relax. Your ride will arrive in a few hours maximum,' he ran his gaze over Leon's bloodshot eyes, '_Actually_ I was wondering if you could help me with something. I hear you're pretty good at studying satellite photographs and I have a few that my people can't make sense of. If you're interested....?'

Leon looked up and smiled, injecting a little sincerity into it, 'This some kind of pity gesture?'

Laughing brusquely, Jean shoved his shoulder hard, 'Pity? Do you know how difficult it is for me to ask an _American_ agent for help? I'm practically pissing over my own reputation and all you can talk about is pity?'

'All right,' Leon shook his head amiably, 'I promise to keep quiet about it. Let me just gather up some things.'

Jean nodded and turned away muttering in French under his breath. It didn't sound complimentary. Leon closed the door, his forehead tilted against its waxy surface. So much for trying to pretend as though everything was fine when he was sweating a puddle onto the carpet. A man who barely knew him could call him on his bullshit. What kind of government agent _was_ he that he couldn't bluff a stranger?

_It is __nothing__ that a good night's sleep can't fix. Nothing at all._

He shoved himself away from the door and turned to the bed. With efficient haste he slipped on his socks and boots, stopping to grab his radio from the nightstand. Perhaps Dumont had a point. There was no way he was going to fall asleep again tonight and an evening of work would help him get his head in order or at least help him forget the sights and sounds of his own personal slice of chaos.

Reaching for his watch, Leon abruptly paused, his hand hovering over the table top. Next to the scratched and battered timepiece sat the set of keys Ada had tossed down to him from her perch in the sky. The tiny white bear they were chained to was gazing at him blankly. On impulse, he snatched it up into his hands and held it up to the light. Ada's captivating smile pressed a red lipstick bow on his mind's eye and vanished once more.

He was about to let the bear slip through his fingers and back into its place when something caught his eye. Beneath the folds of the bear's back lay a tiny zipper barely three inches long. And it had slid down....just a millimetre or two. Leon frowned and unfastened the zipper all the way, its ripping sound making his scalp itch. Sliding his fingers into the innards of the small, stuffed toy he felt something hard against his skin. Gently pulling the object free he found a glossy black canister in his hands. It was plastic, two inches tall and less than a centimetre in diameter. And it was light enough to be hollow inside.

_Ada. What have you done now?_

Faltering for a second, Leon carefully peeled back the lid of the canister revealing a coiled length of film that unravelled from inside. Raising his eyebrow and feeling his heart thump with excitement, he let it slide into his hands. It was no ordinary film. It was microfilm. The black strips held the silhouettes of tiny, indeterminable images and documents. Sitting slowly onto the edge of the bed, he studied the film in his hand and ran over every possible reason Ada would want to give him anything like this. But no answer was satisfactory; too many pieces of the puzzle were missing. It was all such a mess and it would be until he was able to read this message.

Rolling the plastic canister between his thumb and forefinger Leon watched the wind nudge the clouds from the face of the moon and light up the night. He was right about one thing at least. This wasn't going to end anytime soon.

---

_And you thought the earlier chapters raised questions. But I promise all will be answered over time- you can trust me. Honestly. :3_

_Oh, and expect a surprise mini-update in the very near future__..._


	4. No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

**Faith**

_Author's note: Bite-sized update ahoy!_

_n.b. I mixed up my chapter names on the last update, which is why this one is called 'No Good Deed...' and why I've changed Chapter Two's title to 'The Lost Boy'- Just so you guys know that this isn't a typo or something._

**Chapter 4**

**No Good Deed Goes Unpunished**

'_Treason is like diamonds; there is nothing to be made by the small trader.'_

_-- Douglas Jerrold_

It was a room designed around the concept of discomfort. The cell was tomb-like; its single light casting bright cherubic wings in the four corners of the room and a rippling halo onto the ceiling. The walls were solid stone and the floor was high impacted dirt speckled with diamond specks of granite. It was approximately four by eight metres. There was one door, no windows and a low ceiling.

What little character it had was an illusion created by the faint blink of the light against a black canvas. The undersized, swinging light-bulb was powered by a loud and archaic electricity generator that rumbled at a volume just a few notches too loud to be considered background noise; and so it would, constantly and maliciously, pick at her conscious mind and echo through her skull like a whirlpool of sound and swallow her thoughts of the world outside her concrete box. The lighting was weak enough that it strained her eyes and flooded her senses with a dizzying sickness. So for the past twelve hours she had kept her eyes tightly lidded.

Wesker was impatient. That much was obvious to her. Having been dragged there whilst unconscious she had no idea where she was exactly, though she doubted that she had been under sedation for long.

Her ugly and cumbersome suit was still bunched around her slender body, but she was now barefoot; her modest jewellery, watch and, of course, her gun were missing. During her initial scrutiny of the cell she had determined that she was somewhere well-covered; perhaps even deep underground. There were no ambient sounds of the outdoors, no birds, cars or people, and the air was circulated via small vents in the ceiling. Along with the steady blast of musty, stale oxygen, there was a damp kind of cold emanating from the walls, one that made her skin tingle.

She wasn't exactly freezing, but she was uncomfortable. She felt dirty. It agitated her condition and somehow intensified the coppery tang of blood in the back of her mouth and the soreness of her throat. Breathing was difficult but that was no loss. The room smelt of decay. Death existed within these walls, breeding and feeding on corpses like a twisted, breathing entity. It swathed the cell like a dirty sheet, its ends looping around her legs and arms and neck as she sat rigid.

The chair she was shackled to was steel, hard and uneven, and it was bolted to the wall behind her by a long metal chain. It was also positioned two metres in front of the back wall leaving a large gap out of her plane of vision and denying her the ability to see the room from every strategic position.

Her final conclusion was therefore the correct one. Sensory depravation, poor lighting, low temperature, little food or water and the seeds of paranoia. The room was designed especially for her torture, of that she was certain because if their roles were reversed, this would have been her preferred method of interrogation.

Ada Wong's gaze bowed to the floor. Her eyelids trembled and her lips curved inwards with a raw, visceral and thoughtless satisfaction. She swallowed a lungful of sour air and resumed her deep breathing, sweeping the debris of loose thought from her mind.

Auto-circadian meditation.

She had learned it three years ago in Istanbul. The technique provided all the benefits of sleep in a fraction of the time. She wanted to be awake when Wesker showed his face, as was inevitable. The tanned guard that had delivered her water and plain, dried biscuits, which she insolently refused to consume when he had held them to her dry lips, looked Mediterranean so she suspected that she was still in Spain. However, he had not spoken to her or answered her firm barrage of questions.

_Where am I? Where is Wesker? What does he want from me? What's wrong with me? Why am I coughing up blood?_

She had been held captive, formally and for the long term, three times before now. The first time had been the worst because she had been so young. A full month in a crowded Chinese prison at the age of seventeen had been her first field lesson in the importance of protecting herself above all else and of having a heart of ice. It was a mystery to her though, how a young woman with no sense of value for her own life had suffered at the hands of many but had still chosen to claw her way out rather than fester behind sturdy, metal bars.

Ada knew rationally that this thought should brace her resolve and keep her mind open to every improbable, fantastical scenario that culminated with her release. But there was also an unyielding fear. She had much to lose now, more than before, more than she had realised until today. Wesker must have realised that her Plagas sample was a fake and that she was betraying him. How it had happened was naturally something she had spent time considering but really it didn't matter right now. Her deal with The Organisation had been her ticket out. Or so she'd thought. She must have misread the small-print somewhere because it may turn out to be her death warrant.

She sighed and tried to rotate her wrists. They were tightly bound and her fingers were feeling numb and swollen. There was no way that she could break out of them right now, not without gnawing her own arm off. Either way her physical condition was at a nadir. She doubted that she'd be able to stand up and walk if someone did release her and she didn't know if she was going to get better or worse.

There was also another concern that she had barely allowed herself to consider since leaving Saddler's island. It was an issue too delicate to think about lightly.

Without Wesker's knowledge, or even that of The Organisation, Ada had slipped Leon a message, one she had prepared the moment she had learned of his dispatch to Spain. She had been planning to give him the information for many weeks but her mission had given her the ample chance to place it straight into his safe hands under the guise of something completely different. It was a seemingly innocent gesture of protection which would in fact endanger him in so many different ways if she wasn't there as his vanguard clearing the path. Though she knew she could trust him with the information, whether he trusted her enough to follow the explicit and binding instructions was anyone's guess.

_Come on now Ada. You know what the answer is. What reason did you give him to trust you in Spain? He thinks you're working for Wesker and if you die here then he'll never learn anything different. Just take a grain of comfort from the possibility that you may have made a difference for once._

The bolt on the other side of the heavy, iron door in front of her shrieked as it was wrenched back, clanging against its supports and scraping a deep groove into the dusty floor. Ada steadied her breathing and closed her eyes again. Perhaps she could convince the silent warden that she was asleep. It would provide a small advantage and maybe even amuse her for a while. She tucked her chin into her chest, her damp, loose hair falling over her half-closed eyes.

Someone entered the cell, their feet scuffing the dirt floor. But there was no clatter of a tray onto the ground beside her chair, no call to wake, no clumsy shuffling of feet, no slap across the face. Instead they entered with smooth, silent footsteps, shut the door behind them and locked it in one fluid movement.

_Wesker._

Ada's head flew up, her dark eyes finding his face the very second they opened.

Albert Wesker stood between her and the cell door, his skin almost translucent in the cold and unforgiving light, 'Those are not the eyes of a woman who is about to turn into a rabid beast,' he muttered.

He was seemingly uninterested like a visitor admiring her hair or making a throwaway remark about the wet stink of her cell. He was planning to break the ice before he began to break her bones, 'But of course you already know that you haven't been infected with Las Plagas don't you Ada?'

She looked away from him, rage smouldering along her gut and making her teeth clench.

'I understand that this is not the kind of accommodation you are used to,' he continued, his urbane accent making her empty stomach churn, 'But really you're in good company. This room is in the basement is a very old and very established Catholic church just outside of Madrid. It was used extensively during the Spanish Inquisition. In fact Ada, beneath your feet are at least four dozen corpses of traitors executed in the fifteenth century. You're in the presence of your equals. The past, your present and your probable future all in one.'

'Should I applaud your thoughtfulness and consideration? Your wit? Your resources?' she asked, her voice rendered rough and unrecognisable from her lack of water and her aching throat, 'Unfortunately my hands are tied, but if I could I'd spit in your face.'

Wesker crouched low to meet her gaze, resting his muscled arms on his thighs, 'You already have Ada, one way or another. And unlike the other men and women that did so before you, you have lived to tell the tale,' he rose again and tilted towards her till her nose was inches from his abdomen, 'You have a choice. Tell me who you are working for. Tell me where the real Plagas specimen is located.'

'Or what?'

'Do you even have to ask Ada?' he smiled at her soullessly.

She leaned her body backwards and let her head fall, lengthening her neck and allowing her to breath. Air rushed through her nose and into her skull, jumbling her thoughts like leaves strewn about in a strong gale. She fought to gather them up again one by one, 'What did you do to me? I feel....The liquid in the vial wasn't meant to have lasting effects.'

'We pumped your stomach once we verified that the Plagas specimen was false. It's why you feel so weak and your throat is sore,' he replied tersely as if she were a moron, 'You are simply suffering the after effects of an invasive procedure and a rather nasty cocktail of chemicals. Now tell me, who are you working for?'

'Who do you think? Myself, you son of a bitch!' she forced the words out between tight lips, a passionate growl that tainted her heart and soul with a half-truth.

Wesker lost his temper, striking her across the jaw with the back of his hand, 'Don't test me. I taught you to lie like that Ada. Do you think that I haven't been watching you? Did you honestly believe that I had no idea what you have been doing for the past year and a half? We were always going to reach this point Ada but since you moved up your timetable and aided that boy Kennedy a second time I have had to respond in kind.'

Ada panted for breath, her reply almost completely garbled as her jaw began to throb, 'It's a prudent reaction on your part, I understand. But tell me Wesker, if you have been watching me for so long why do you lack even the basic information?'

'Because,' he told her softly, placing his finger under her chin and slowly scraping the blots of dried blood from her cheek with his thumb, 'you are the best I've seen in a long time. You covered your tracks well, kept me guessing for a long time. I knew that you'd betray me because deceit is in your veins, but you were valuable enough to tolerate in exchange for what you brought me. It would be a shame to waste your talents Ada, but you are a disposable pawn on a chess board. You always will be no matter who you whore yourself out to. We can't change what is in our nature, we can only enhance it.'

He let her go and stepped away, dusting the grime from his leather gloves.

'If you know me so well then you already know my answer,' Ada looked up at him, her eyes wide and clear though his back was to her. It was less demanding to lie to his face than to speak the truth before his eyes, to look into the crimson rivers around his pupils and watch that rare and precious commodity disappear down them into nothing, 'You already know so you may as well just go and thrill yourself elsewhere. Don't waste your time with me. I'm not talking.'

Wesker dwelled on that for a moment. He seemed grimly disappointed with her answer, 'You _will_ talk Ada, eventually. I'd prefer to take the easier, faster and cleaner route to that inevitable conclusion. The choice of _how_ you talk, not _if_ you talk, is yours to make. Tell me where the Master Plagas specimen is and you won't be harmed. Who did you give it to?'

She shook her head and coughed suddenly, the chains rattling as she convulsed against the chair. Wesker was right. This decision, this sense of power no matter how minute, was hers alone. And she had made that choice years ago in Raccoon City.

'Very well,' he turned to the solid metal door and effortlessly threw it open. He paused by the light-switch and reached up, snapping it and plunging the room into semi-darkness, 'We begin in the morning.'

Wesker closed the door behind him, snuffing the last beams of light in her cell. Ada shivered as the room seemed to freeze over. He'd left part of himself in here with her, she could feel it. It repelled her, fascinated her, amused her; but she didn't fear it. At least not yet.

A sudden and unnerving stillness fell as the electricity generator was terminated. Then a silence advanced on her, more piercing than a scream. She inhaled slowly to resume her meditation, the uneven texture to her breaths like a rusty nail across dry bricks, spurting out hot, painful sparks. Before long her efforts were successful, something small moved within her and her mind was cleansed of the unsettling knowledge of what she knew awaited her the following day.

---

Oh and lastly in general to everyone, whilst I do love putting up updates, I spent months writing this story so I don't want to rush this and have it all up in just a couple of weeks. As a result even though I appreciate that you guys look forward to updates (I do too!) I will be sticking to a schedule of about around one main chapter a week with the shorter ones put up a little faster. I won't update sooner unless I have to for personal or logistical reasons. Since I always find it a shame when fics I enjoy take long and unavoidable hiatuses (due to the author's 'real life' commitments) when I write I make sure that I have most, if not all, of the story completed before I start to put it up. This way, whatever happens in my work and studies, I am unlikely to have to put the story on the backburner or leave it unfinished. I can also give you all notice as to when I'm going to update.

And on that note: the next update will be on _Wednesday 23rd January_ :-)


	5. Have Faith in Me

**Faith**

_Author's note: This whole chapter could be nothing but 'thanks for the reviews' over and over again for ten thousand words and it still wouldn't feel like enough. So come closer...a little closer...that's right...now hug your computer screen... (I'm hugging you back right now!) :D_

**Chapter 5**

**Have Faith in Me**

_Faith is the peerless bridge supporting what we see unto the scene that we do not._

_--Emily Dickinson_

In life one of the easiest lessons to learn is to fear the unknown. During Leon's early teens his mother's entire parenting regime, as structured and logical as it had been, had centred on the notion that forewarned is forearmed. She hated surprises. He'd always wondered why. But his dream, if it was indeed an accurate memory, had provided a viable answer via the look on his mother's face when she had opened that door and uttered her husband's name for the last time. He was never 'Nathan' after that. He was always just 'your father' and it was said with such withering apathy that Leon had felt the sting of guilt for even bringing the man up in conversations. It was as if his dad was old news. His mom had never liked being reminded of her mistakes or her youth. She preferred to see herself as having sprung fully grown from the earth like an overnight orchid. And like her, Leon hated being kept in the dark about those he loved and those whose lives were intimately wrapped around his own.

For almost three hours Leon had sat opposite Dumont in the largest dining room of the chateaux feasting his eyes on a spread of satellite photographs from the eastern region of North Korea. He'd always prided himself on having a good eye for detail, but surveillance photographs of such glorious technicality and complexity had stumped him during his first few weeks as an independent operative researching Umbrella after the T-Virus disaster.

It had taken too many late nights, but he had, with help from every expert photographer he could corner, learned how to detect even the slightest glitch on an image. It was one of the first skills he'd developed as an agent. He knew that he had to be able to find Umbrella if he was to have a snowflake's chance in hell of stopping them. But Umbrella was like broken glass in the sand; dangerous, illusive and only visible once already tainted with some poor sucker's blood.

He'd grown better over time, able to edge around the sharp corners and trace the mistakes of others whilst beating a path of his own right to Umbrella's door. And then he'd worked with others, sending them on assignments and missions with the work he'd gathered. It had been exciting.

It still was.

Leon shifted in his seat as the jet popped out of the other side of another pocket of turbulence. His fingers dug into the armrest and he clenched his teeth. The violent knotting of his muscles tugged at the skin around his wounds till the fabric of those healing scars were close to tearing again.

He and Ashley had eagerly boarded the plane just thirty minutes ago and they'd been in the air for less than twenty. Shortly after that a rainstorm had flared up over southern France and it was currently tossing their little aircraft around the sky like a dog with a chew toy. Heavy bullets of rain peppered the windows and the sky flashed grey and white every few minutes.

It hadn't taken long for him to decide to close the blinds.

The plane jolted once more and Leon grunted awkwardly as his head shot up in surprise. Across the aisle Ashley giggled lightly, blushing pink when he raised his eyebrows up at her questioningly.

'I'm sorry,' she smiled sleepily, 'I'd assumed that you weren't afraid of anything, let alone flying.'

Leon shrugged easily, forcing his hunched shoulders down, 'Being fired through the air at several hundred miles an hour in a small tin can would make anyone nervous. It's not the flying that scares me. I've taken a little flight training in my time so I prefer having a view of the cockpit or my butt in the pilot's seat. Guess I'm just a lousy passenger.'

'Or a control freak.'

'Low blow!' he laughed.

Ashley grinned, her impossibly white and undoubtedly expensive smile spreading across her face like a sunbeam, 'I think I've been in more planes than cars over the past year. I take solace in the fact that there are more maniacs on the road than there are in the sky.'

'Statistically speaking of course,' he replied thoughtfully, 'Are you okay back there?'

'Well I'm not clawing at my armrest or jumping every time the engine rattles,' she made a face at him, her clownish smile exaggerated and nearly ghoulish against the backlight of thunderstorm flashing through the glass beside her, 'What do you think?'

Slouching against his seat Leon craned his head to take a better look at her, 'You should get some sleep.'

'What about you?'

'What about me? I've already rested.'

He decided the fact that nightmares and hallucinations had rendered those hours of sleep completely void was an irrelevant detail. He quivered slightly as the overpowering sense of confusion and helplessness he'd felt in his dream returned to him. But he smothered the trembling by stretching his arms nonchalantly over his head and faking a yawn. Running his hand over his lap he felt the reassuring bump of that small plastic canister and remembered the miniature message it held. A tiny, ticking time-bomb.

Mistaking his sudden sombreness for nerves, Ashley pouted in sympathy.

'Will you try something for me?' she asked.

Leon chewed his lip and then smiled tightly, 'Sure. I'm at your service. At least until we land. Then you're on your own.'

Wrinkling her nose at him, Ashley unbuckled her seatbelt and hopped along two more seats to position herself just across the narrow aisle from him, 'I'm doing a minor in psychology you know.'

'Really?'

He'd almost forgotten. Over the past twenty four hours Ashley had somehow become a distinct being from the faceless 'subject' he'd researched on his way over to Spain. She wasn't just Ashley Graham, the President's youngest daughter anymore. She was a friend.

'This'll help calm you down. At least, I hope it will. I'm not totally sure but...' she began with a pleasant smile but her rambling didn't instil him with confidence.

'I'm perfectly calm-'

'Ah. Okay. Then let's just say you're helping me with my homework.'

He relaxed a tiny fraction, 'That's not in my job description.'

She sighed and shook her blonde curls, 'My dad pays your wages. Now close your eyes and count to ten. Slowly.'

Rolling his eyes, Leon humoured her as much for her own sake as for his. She may have been bright and chipper since they'd boarded the jet, but she'd failed to mention that she, like him, hadn't slept much at all over the past few hours. Her eyes were framed by heavy sashes of grey.

Closing his eyes, Leon tried hard to swallow his smirk and concentrate.

'Okay. I've counted to ten. What's next?'

'That was not ten seconds!' she exclaimed.

'Yeah it was.'

'It wasn't.'

'Something tells me that this is going to be a long plane ride,' he chuckled.

'Hush up.'

'Yes Ma'am.'

Clearing her throat, she continued firmly sounding like a ten year old playing dress-up, looping a stethoscope around her neck and examining her toys. It was sweet in a way, but he was less than enthused to play the guinea pig, 'Okay. I'm going to say a word and I want you to say the first thing that comes into your head. The very first thing, okay? Be honest.'

Keeping his eyes closed, Leon frowned, 'The first thing that comes to mind? Exactly how much is your father paying for your college course?'

'Oh you are so on thin ice!'

'Sorry. Sorry! All right, I'm listening. Go for it.'

'Home,' she started softly, her voice getting fainter as the list continued on.

'Uh..Los Angeles,' he replied calmly.

'Dog.'

'Toy.'

'Ship.'

'Water.'

'Run.'

'Hide.'

'Finger.'

'Trigger.'

'Red.'

_Ada._

His mind went blank as his lips struggled to form the word and failed. Her name was a shock to the system. He chose the more neutral option for now.

'...Blood,' he eventually replied.

Leon waited, his body comfortably slumped in his chair and his eyes fused shut. But he heard no reply from Ashley. His eyelids twitched as he remained ever patient. Seconds slid by and silence reigned.

'Ashley?' he murmured tapping his fingers against the edge of the seat.

His body was suddenly thrown backwards as a loud, metallic explosion filled the cabin. Light seared his eyes like lightening.

For a moment he'd assumed that the plane had been ripped inside out, the top torn off like the lid of a sardine tin. Leon opened his eyes and instinctively tried to jump to his feet only to find two pairs of rough, burly hands thrusting him back and pinning his shoulders down. His back hit something firm and flat. He wasn't sitting down anymore. He was horizontal. He was lying down.

Startled and furious, Leon reached out and grabbed hold of the arms that held him as his eyes struggled to adjust to the powerful sunburst of light. His nails scratched against flesh of the figures that restrained him and he distantly heard them yelling for assistance. Their grip on him tightened as he writhed, quickly becoming dizzy and nauseous.

He squinted through the glare to find several shadows standing over him. One of them reached for his face.

The light bled away into tiny spots and he was able to see again. He wasn't in the plane anymore. He was lying on a steel bed in a room with mint green walls and dazzling lights. His head was throbbing and he felt beads of moisture tickling down his forehead and threatening to roll into his left eye. Dry throat and aching joints, he recognised the symptoms of dehydration and shock. His legs were freezing and they were tingling as though being showered by tiny pins of ice. Looking down he noticed that he was wearing a thin, blue gown. His clothes and boots were gone. His legs were badly bruised and bleeding, but they were thankfully still intact.

'I can't keep him still. Tony, man! Don't just stand there,' one of the men above him yelled as he pressed Leon back into the warm fug of the mattress.

Frantic voices overlapped each other but he was able to pick out the mechanical mumbling of the white-coated woman who drifted pale and spectre like above. But she wasn't looking at him.

'Male, late twenties, severe head trauma and blood loss. Preliminary first aid has been carried out but he needs an IV and full wound dressing,' she instructed the dark haired man to Leon's right, 'He's also agitated and confused.'

'What the hell's going on?' Leon gasped, the back of his mouth felt sharp and tasted of blood, 'Where am I? Where's Ashley?'

'He's delirious and dehydrated,' the woman continued evenly, tossing her clipboard onto the table beside the bed, 'Nurse Peters prep the IV immediately. What are you waiting for? Do it now, not after your lunch break!'

As the first man reluctantly released him and marched to the cabinet of medical supplies, Leon tried to shuffle into sitting position but he only made it halfway into a strange kind of slouch balancing on his forearms. It intensified the ache of the heavy burns across his body, sent alarm bells of pain along his back and somehow trapped a nerve in his shoulder paralysing him for a few seconds.

He could see everything but it was all so disjointed, the edges refused to connect. Enclosed, thick walls, heavy doors. Clinical, clean, the smell of bleach singed his nostrils. It looked like...no...it _was_ a hospital. The room was more like a small hall, its walls were painted in pale green and cream, and his bed was surrounded by a large, white sheet that blocked his view of the area to his right. To his left there was a window with thick blinds barricading them in against the early morning light.

_The plane. It must have...but how in God's name could I have survived that?_

Panic kicked away the last lingering drops of lethargy that were keeping his eyes half-closed and his back on that bed. He should have said something about the plane, asked the pilot to check the engine over again. He hadn't reacted fast enough. He'd gotten sloppy, comfortable and careless. He was the lone survivor of yet another terrible mistake.

'Where is she? Is she all right? Did she survive?' he asked insistently, reaching out for the grey-haired, bespectacled doctor whose name tag read "Dr Bartlet". Her coat was loose and her hair was limp and pinched back into a ponytail. She looked tired and hungry, her eyes shrunken in their sockets. But she moved her hands around his bed with so swiftly that he barely felt them touch his skin. She was lucid to the point of frozen.

Then her cold fingers covered his hand and he flinched, 'The woman you were with survived just fine. She's in the next bed.'

Leon turned to stare at the thick curtain blocking his view from the bed at the right side of the room, 'Can I see her? You don't understand... It's my job to take care of her...'

'We're well aware of your job Agent Kennedy, but you are not to leave this room. Do you understand?' she interrupted unsmilingly.

_Agent Kennedy? She knows who I am at least. It should make this easier._

'Where is this place?' he breathed, settling back reluctantly as the remaining nurse left to assist his colleague in the corner of the room. Leon watched them wearily, his hands curling into fists and his chest straining against his throaty breathing.

'This is a secure wing of St Anna-Maria's Hospital in Southern Italy. We were sent from the American Embassy to handle your recovery. Your mission was too delicate to allow regular doctors without clearance to have access to either of you,' Bartlet continued, as she stole a glance at the wall clock, 'You're lucky we were available. I'm due to fly back to New York in a couple of hours.'

Italy? That was impossible. They'd been heading in the opposite direction. They'd been over Western Europe heading out over the Atlantic towards the States.

'Wait...wait a minute,' Leon turned to her, 'Italy? That...that can be right. We were heading to Washington DC.'

'It's unwise for you to give out details of your mission Agent Kennedy. Just try to relax. You've been MIA for four days.'

_Four days?_

One of the nurses carried an IV stand over to his bed and the other began redressing the wounds on his left arm and forehead. Leon tried his best to remain relaxed, but his thoughts were saturated with dread. The seconds were dense. With each minute his patience was being ground down.

'Let me see her. Please,' he appealed to her in as calm a tone as he could manage in his current bruised and bloodied state, 'I need to talk to someone from the agency.'

'Mr Kennedy...' Dr Bartlet said in a long-suffering tone as she reached over to skilfully prepare the clear bag of IV fluid, 'The explosion caused a severe head injury. You're lucky to be alive but if you don't keep still...'

'Explosion?' he echoed, 'Let me talk to Ashley.'

Bartlet's pale lips twisted as she peered at him lethargically over her glasses, 'Ashley?'

'Yes. Ashley! The girl I was with. The one that survived with me.'

Ignoring him, Bartlet looked up to one of the nurses, 'Julian, prepare a sedative.'

Leon's eyes widened, 'What? No. You don't need to put me to sleep. I'm not-'

'Mr Kennedy, you need to calm down-'

Pushing his body up with his elbows, he grimaced in pain and began to edge off the bed, 'Sorry Doctor, but something's not right here...'

The curtain beside his bed suddenly twitched and he heard the muffled, indignant cries of other doctors and nurses as the sheet was snatch back by a pair of slender, feminine fingers. A figure stepped past the sheet and made a beeline for his bed, shoving past the broad-shouldered interns. A white bandage covered her forehead with blood seeping out from under it, her left arm was badly burned and her captivating, olive-green eyes were brimming with concern, casting spotlights onto his face and pinning him to the bed more viscerally than those two burley nurses ever could. Her hospital gown, though loose and wafer-thin, failed to conceal the dip of her slender waist and the sweep of her run-away thighs.

_She can make a hospital gown look like eveningwear? Perfect. _

Leon blushed and silently damned whoever had dressed him in a hospital gown and obliterated any chance he may have had to conceal his reaction to seeing her like this.

'Miss Wong, you can't come in here. You've been told before,' Bartlet snapped throwing her body in-between Ada and Leon's bed, 'Please get back into your bed to have your injuries dealt with.'

A tall, bearded man with a lab coat and a flustered expression, Ada's doctor presumably, poked his head around the curtain and directed an annoyed grimace at his patient, which she ignored in favour of giving Dr Bartlet an icy death-glare.

The doctor took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders to give herself a little more height next to the woman who towered over her. But Ada was undeterred; her only movement was the gentle incline of one eyebrow that caused a slow, creeping blush to inch its way up Bartlet's neck.

Throwing Leon a quick, indecipherable glance, Ada clasped her hands behind her back, gave the doctor a sarcastic smile and slowly sauntered to her bed. Leon collapsed back onto the firm mattress and watched her slip back behind the curtain.

'I assume that you're satisfied Agent Kennedy,' Bartlet said, her voice stretched tighter than the skin of a drum.

_Satisfied? Nope, not in any way. Either I'm dreaming again or Ashley's hypnotised me._

Leon settled back into the bed with a sheepish smile and let the disgruntled Bartlet apply the IV with probably more force than was actually necessary. It took almost half an hour to treat him and clean his wounds, but it gave Leon plenty of time to think. It didn't take him long to reach the conclusion that he was dreaming again. He had to be. The intensity of the light, the noise, every physical sensation somehow dialled up to maximum all the time. It had happened when he'd dreamed of his father and of Ada.

He couldn't see straight, his head sometimes felt like it was hovering above his neck. It was as if he was being picked up and moved around like a child's plaything. The 'explosion' Bartlet had mentioned, Ada appearing again, his injuries. It sounded like the result of the end of his last dream. He'd been held in a desert location with Arabic-speaking guards. If he had been in the Near East or North Africa then any evacuation chopper could have taken them to southern Italy for medical attention. It made sense, though he'd never considered coherence and clarity to be the hallmark of a psychotic break.

After ordering Leon not to leave the bed under any circumstances, Bartlet and her staff shuffled off and the room fell quiet. Pulling the rough covers over his lap, Leon groaned. He hated hospitals, not so much due of the doctors or the smells or the food or the treatments, but because of the inertia of the hospital bed. So no surprise that his merciless subconscious would place him in one with a doctor who obviously thought he was a nutcase.

After Raccoon City, he had spent over a week in a crowded hospital, blood congealing in the late summer heat and doctors rushed off their feet in an attempt to keep up with the demand for beds and attention from the survivors. He'd had nothing to do but lie on his back and battle the urge to sleep.

When the police had finally gotten round to interviewing him he had been both excited and relieved. He'd smiled for the first time in days. But the 'talk' had taken less than an hour. The detectives he'd met had simply rushed him through his tale, taken sparse notes and concluded that he was simply a rambling lunatic attempting to earn himself a commendation, a shiny hero's medal and a spot on cable TV. Claire had already left to look for her brother and Sherry had been just a kid at the time. Despite any corroborating evidence he had been able to produce no authority was given the 'permission' to accept his story or even had the guts to tell him that they believed him. He'd steered clear of the police from that moment on. He wasn't one of them anymore.

The soft padding of bare feet on the glassy floor caught his attention and he turned to find Ada slowly and shakily drawing the long curtain back. She was wrapped in a blue bathrobe and limping slightly, her injured arm nestled against her body. Without sparing him a glance she shuffled over to the chair beside the window and with a small shudder gently lowered her body into it. She wiggled a little to get comfortable. He had to admit it, he felt more than a little silly bandaged up like King Tut, with Ada lounging empress-like before him; Cleopatra, beauty and grace, enough to topple empires and leave a trail of broken hearts in the same way most others would leave footprints.

_Really not a great time to be thinking like that, Kennedy. What did that doctor inject you with anyway?_

'How are you feeling?' Ada asked distantly, as she straightened the front of her robe and crossed her legs; as composed as ever.

It'd take more than an explosion to ruffle her feathers. He'd always both admired and feared that part of her.

'Never been better,' Leon muttered, attempting to match the frosty edge to her tone. But he couldn't maintain its sharp edge, 'You?' he asked, his chest quivering as giggles blossomed in his throat.

_Wow, she looks pretty in cotton....wait. Why did I just think that?_

Ada's forehead wrinkled as she looked up at him apprehensively, the navy-blue robe making her eyes seem even darker than before, like a rainforest at midnight, 'I'm in perfect shape except for a bit of a concussion from when you threw me to the floor.'

He lingered on her face for a moment, the tension around his eyes drifting away, 'That's an interesting way of saying "thank you for saving my life". Don't I at least get a hug?'

She was a little startled by the teasing tone of his voice, her lips parting in wonder, 'If you think I'm going to swoon all over you like Ashley does then you're going to be sorely disappointed.'

Leon smirked and brushed the hair from his eyes, wincing as he knocked the bruises on his forehead, 'When have you ever swooned for anyone?'

'Wouldn't you like to know, Cowboy,' she whispered gazing at the window as though fascinated with the grey stripes of the blinds.

He stared at her again for a little longer, lost in the playful folds of black and dark brown in her hair as the sun ran its hands around her face, 'Ada?'

She didn't look at him, 'Yes? What?'

'What exactly happened after the explosion?'

'You don't remember?' she asked softly gazing back at him.

She seemed intrigued with his disorientation, maybe even worried by it.

'No. It's all a blank page,' he replied slowly trying hard not to sound suspicious or writhe under her look of fascination.

She hummed to herself sweetly, 'You were half-conscious when I woke up. I managed to help you to the helicopter just in time and we escaped. It was a close call,' she smiled slightly, 'Then again when is it not?'

Leon eyed her cynically, her brief and concise tale flicking on several alarm bells within him, 'And why did you come for me anyway? How did you know where I was?'

'I was in a lab in Greece when I heard that Wesker's team had captured you in Egypt,' she declared a little louder, 'I know what Wesker does to his prisoners. I know it personally in fact,' glaring at him decisively she continued, 'I flew over right away and blew my cover with Umbrella to get you out of there. Wesker knows that I've betrayed him now and I have no choice but to resort to Plan B and take refuge with the CIA. I told you and the agency not to continue with "Mission Nightingale" and that the operation was reckless, but you just couldn't trust me could you? You couldn't vouch for me even for an instant because it clashed with your male ego. You couldn't wait a few more days and now you've compromised everything.'

Her growling outburst tugged at the hairs along the back of his neck. She looked annoyed with him, really angry just like she had been in his last dream and on that walkway in Birkin's lab a lifetime ago. He'd defied her; he'd somehow tripped up the strongest and most stubbornly autonomous individual he'd ever met.

For an irrational minute he felt like apologising to her, before he realised that this was a dream and that he had no memory of what had led up to 'Mission Nightingale'. It wasn't his fault. This wasn't even real, no matter how powerful it felt to be just metres from the image of her. Nevertheless, the taunt and distressed trembling in her voice made him want to gather her up in his arms and bury her against him till this dream inevitably ended.

Dusting his head clean of the startlingly real urge to touch her, Leon decided to get some answers, 'So, what's "Plan B" about?'

'What do you mean?' she asked nonchalantly.

'Are you just going to shrug me off by asking questions whenever I ask a question?'

'Do you want me to?' she murmured.

'Do you think I do?'

'How would I know?' she grinned devilishly and slid her bare legs against each other as if delighting in the gloriously soft friction she'd created.

In an instant she could go from looking like she wanted to strangle him to seeming as if she couldn't suppress her desire to tease him till he lost control. Leon could sympathise. He felt the same way about her. He always had.

'That's it huh? So you're not going to talk about it at all?'

She shook her head from side to side.

'All right,' he took a quick appraisal of the empty ward, 'Then what else are we going to do here? There's not much in the way of entertainment, unless you want to compare scars.'

Ada didn't answer. She was too preoccupied with picking the lint off her dressing gown.

'You look thirsty,' he tried again, sidling along the bed a few inches as if it'd make any difference, 'Do you want to share my IV? It's delicious,' he asked lifting his heavy arm off the mattress and pulling gently at the tube that led to the translucent sack suspended by his bedside.

Her chin rose slowly and she looked him in the eye, the corners of her mouth angling downwards a little as her bottom lip curved. She opened her mouth and for an instant he thought she was going to ask if he was serious.

'No. Thank you,' she replied formally but not unkindly, 'I've already eaten.'

He'd forgotten what hard work she was and how much he, oddly enough, enjoyed every exasperating, hair-pulling second of it.

'Then I guess all we've got left to do is talk,' he suggested with a gentle smile.

Her lips parted into a silent laugh, 'I don't think we're that desperate yet Leon.'

Ducking his head away to hide the smirk that was stretching across his face, Leon insisted, 'I'm serious. There are no zombies now, no Ganados, no explosions. Just give me the basic run down. The Idiot's Guide to Ada Wong. Come on. What are you doing here?'

Ada folded her hands across her lap, 'You know exactly what this is about.'

'Humour me for a minute. Pretend I hit my head and forgot everything that's happened.'

She gave a huffy sigh, 'My aim, before _you_ and those reprobates at the CIA decided that you knew better, was to dismantle Wesker's group from the inside, to gather as much intelligence as possible and report it to the CIA through The Organisation,' she softened the insult with a smile, 'Ring any bells handsome or is it all still one big blank?'

"The Organisation"? He'd heard of them before. They were a footnote in his research from years ago. Supposedly a restricted branch of Interpol, they were an alliance of over twenty world nations that acted separately from every other intelligence group on the planet. They were above MI5, the CIA, the FBI or the CSIS apparently. They were rogue, careless, and powerful, and they had a network of influence wider than any other known intelligence group. For all these reasons and more Director Mitchell hated them. More to the point, why would he dream about Ada working for them? Was it just wishful thinking on his part? He considered asking Ada exactly what was on that roll of film she'd given him in Spain but he quickly quashed the idea. This was a dream and it couldn't be trusted.

'So you're working for them huh? That's a pretty big risk you're taking,' he winced at his callous understatement and decided to forgo the temptation to explore this Ada's career options lest they give him false hope.

Ada took a deep breath and leisurely glanced around the room, her gaze roaming over the empty chairs, the cold beds, the abandoned wheelchairs and the perilously slippery floor-tiles, 'Why did you call for Ashley just now?'

Leon looked up to find Ada staring at her bare feet as if she had an almost childlike fascination with her own tiny toes. He had to admit she did have very cute feet.

He chuckled as he recalled her question, 'Ashley?'

'Yes. Ashley. You called for Ashley,' she repeated in a tone that was just a shade too condescending for his comfort, 'And in your cell you referred to Spain.'

'I...I don't know. I guess I was just confused.'

'Uh-huh,' she leaned back in the chair.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'What's what supposed to mean?' she tilted her head innocently and shot him a shameless smile that knocked the air from his lungs.

'Never mind,' Leon shook his head, 'Are you going to answer my question about why you need me for your mission or are we going to banter all day, because I'm beat.'

Ada flicked a light curl of ebony hair from her face revealing her neat criss-cross of stitches.

'What happened there?' Leon asked, nodding at the gash above her eye and feeling acutely aware of how ridiculous they both must look together with their matching set of his and hers head injuries.

'When I was helping you to the helicopter a guard jumped out of the shadows. I stopped him but in the process I...miscalculated and paid the price,' she shrugged dispassionately.

'Looks deep.'

'I'll be fine. I'm not Ashley. I don't need you to coddle me.'

'Why do you keep bringing her up?' he asked, amused and more than a little baffled, 'Why do you care what I do with Ashley?'

Her eyes widened suddenly as if he'd just pulled a gun on her. But the moment passed quickly and she simply smiled, 'You've been behaving erratically since I rescued you. You're the one fixating on what happened all those years ago, not me.'

Bracing both hands either side of the chair, she heaved her body out of the seat, grunting in the process. Leon made a move to help her but stopped when he felt the restraining cord of the IV still plugged deep into his arm. A dense thud of grief replaced the rapturous dance that his heartbeat had begun when she'd first emerged from behind that curtain. It felt a lot like disappointment.

'Are you just going to leave again?' he asked quietly.

She carried on walking towards him as if she hadn't heard. Stopping in front of his bed she tilted her head to the side expectantly. Leon stared back at her, counting the steady flutter of her eyelashes as they beat against her eyes. Ada slowly lifted her arm and swept the hair off his forehead, tenderly inspecting his bruises and stroking the downy linen of his bandages. As her fingertips delicately traced his brow, she absently nibbled her lip.

'You're awfully inquisitive tonight. There are some things that I can't tell you, Leon,' she purred, her lush lips curving decadently, 'You'll just have to live with that.'

His lips twitched as he dared to return her smile. A goofy feeling of rapture settled over him and for a microsecond all he knew was that surgical soap mixed with the peppery scent of her skin had suddenly become the most erotic smell in the world. But at the last second he faltered; her words sunk into him like teeth and drained whatever patience he had left.

He didn't want to live like this; there was no future in it. It was the dry shell of a stupid fantasy. If what he'd felt before was contentment, and not the delirious buzz of painkillers, it had suddenly hightailed it out of the room without him. Leon jerked his head away from her, leaving her hand suspended aimlessly in the air. She became a shade paler but her expression remained the same.

'You expect me to work alongside you with that kind of arrangement?' he asked, indignant and breathless.

'I expect you to trust me,' she tapped her red nails against the rail beside his bed and seeming almost impatient with him, 'Perhaps telling you nothing is better than the truth. The truth is a scary thing.'

'I don't scare easily.'

'Really?' she began to back away from him slowly, a measured retreat, 'And why should I tell you what I'm doing? You don't have any claim over me. Besides it's...'

'Complicated?' he asked with a lazy, forlorn smile, 'You think I don't know that already? I'm covered in blood. I haven't eaten in days, which is a blessing I guess because I think my stomach is trying to dissolve itself from the inside. And my head is spinning. I can actually see two of you right now.'

'That's my fault is it?'

'No. That's not what I mean,' he exhaled gruffly and tapped his hand against his knee as he endeavoured to piece together the words, 'This isn't just the two of us going about our separate jobs and bumping into each other along the way like...like...'

'Two ships passing in the night?' Ada offered, her dark lashes fanning her cheeks as she blinked.

'Well...I was going to say "like two airplanes in a thunderstorm". But whatever works for you,' he angled his head back a little, cringing as the fluorescent glow of the overhead lights blinded him, 'Things become too complicated if I have to work beside you but second guess your every move and question every word you say. I don't have time for that.'

'We're all short on time Leon,' Ada looked away mournfully, her attention drifting across the white and silvery steel room, 'I've saved your life at a risk to my own. I thought that that would be enough for you.'

As frail as she looked, she had a wall of determination and stubbornness so high around her that it could have knocked satellites out of orbit. It irritated him, pecking away at his nerves till he didn't care if his arguments made sense or not. He just wanted to grab her by the arms and shake her.

'Every time you did that was because you needed me as canon fodder to help you reach your own objective,' he retorted in a calm and even tone but a clammy sweat was already lacing his brow, 'You did it in Spain and now you're doing it again to me _and_ the CIA! You're unbelievable. Your objective is what matters most to you and it always will. Don't you dare lie to me and pretend it's any other way. Don't pretend you're here out of concern for me. Just _don't_.'

'You have no right to say something like that when you know nothing about my life or what I have to do everyday-'

'Then tell me!' he exclaimed, swallowing hard against the rough, sandy texture of his throat, 'Don't just expect me to automatically know.'

'There is nothing automatic about it. I tell you something every time I watch over you!' she replied, her voice almost freezing the air around them, '_That_ is my honesty Leon. I don't need words to prove it. I want to work with you on this mission, not against you. Isn't that enough?'

He'd been asking himself that very question for six years and the answer was 'no'. It wasn't enough for him; not now, not ever.

Working beside Ada was easy in the frenzy of the moment, in the river of blood and the storm of sound, the thrust of his gun, the craving to succeed and protect and win...they were one in those moments. She was the spark that fired him off, a reaction jumping and spiking higher and higher as they shared breath. But the thought of the aftermath, the inevitable separation that would always follow, killed him. How often could a man come back from the dead? He could accept almost anything from her except that sudden loss. It came out of nowhere hitting him with the force of a ten tonne truck. If the future meant eternally chasing after Ada whilst her eyes were set on a different prize then he just couldn't face it. Of course he could take up the offer. He could play games with her and always be one step behind for the rest of his life.

Clenching his fists to stop them shaking, he replied huskily, 'Don't do me any favours. I don't need you to watch out for me Ada. I don't _want_ you to watch out for me anymore. I don't care who you work for or what you do. It's none of my business. I just don't want to be involved. Leave me out of it.'

As she listened to him she was motionless, not even sparing the energy to breath in and out. She lifted her chin suddenly against that final onslaught, her lashes quivering as her eyes fell shut. When she opened them again there was a glare so molten and hateful that he almost fumbled to his hip, reaching for a weapon that wasn't there.

'Screw you Leon,' she muttered through clenched teeth.

Ada breathed in deeply, her outburst shocking her away from his bed. She backed away from him in alarm and turned around, striding towards the door of their joint hospital room.

Leon glanced away from her retreating back and chuckled sourly, sarcasm burning his cheeks like an acid splash and turning them red, 'Yeah. Run away. It's what you do every time you don't get your way. God forbid you _ever_ surprise me.'

Ada stopped inches short of the door, her feet scuffing slightly at his words. He heard a shaky sigh as she folded her arms at her abdomen for moment as if she was going to be ill. Leon swallowed hard, but it didn't push back the wave of remorse that sailed up from his gut to slap him in the face. At that moment he wished that he could run away from himself too. Or maybe just kick his own ass. He hadn't expected her to react like that. He'd expected a coy smile, a sharp-witted remark that would cut him down to size, a slap in the jaw even. Anything but this. Snatching at the door handle Ada viciously shoved it open and left, letting it slam shut behind her. The collision of wood against metal hinges made the glass beakers on the nearby shelves wobble and clang together.

As the glass cups rattled to a stop, Leon could hear the brusque slapping of hands from the corner of the room. He twisted around to find a man applauding him and lounging inelegantly in the vacant chair by the window, his long legs splayed out in front of him and crossed at the ankle. The man wore a regulation military uniform, unbuttoned and decorated with a jumbled mass of greens and brown patches. Silver and gold medals hung in orderly rows over his chest. Leon recognised the outfit from a dozen faded photographs that were tucked in the bottom of stale boxes in his mother's attic.

'Bravo,' the soldier chuckled, 'You deal with women almost as badly as I do. I'm a little disappointed I must admit. But it is flattering on some level. I think I'll just consider it a tribute act.'

'You?' his eyes widened, 'At least I know for sure that I'm dreaming all this. You really had me going this time. I feel worse than I look right now.'

'The mind is more powerful than the body. That's the first thing they taught us as cadets. Your mind can create pain as real as any knife can,' Nathan explained briskly.

_I wasn't referring to the physical pain, Dad._

'Either way, I'd like to leave.'

'What's the point in that? Your mission is complete. Ashley's fine. There's nothing back there for you right now. You should be here,' Nathan told him with a slow nod, 'I'm worried about you.'

'Worried about me? Why? Or do I have to guess that too? Is there some kind of prize involved to make this worth my time?'

Nathan laughed, throwing back his close shaven head, 'It's not that simple Leon.'

Smiling solemnly, Leon picked absent-mindedly at the covers on his bed, 'Why is Ada here? She's been in both of these...experiences and I want to know why.'

'Meeting her again in Spain after all these years has unearthed feelings inside of you. You have a hundred questions that your conscious mind can't answer so you've brought yourself here.'

'Wait. Brought myself? Are you saying all this,' he waved his hand to encompass the entire room, 'is because of me? I must be sicker than I thought.'

'You don't think that I'm the one behind all this do you?' his father smirked, 'Believe me I couldn't have made up crazy shit like this if I tried. All this is down to your heart and your mind coming to blows over the woman you can't stop thinking about. The carnage has been pretty impressive so far.'

'Carnage is the right word for it,' he eyed his father wearily, 'Ada gave me something in Spain. It looks like information but I haven't been able to read it yet. You wouldn't happen to know what it's about would you?'

'Nope. I have no idea.'

'But this has something to do with her, doesn't it?'

'Everything is connected. Perhaps this is your heart's way of telling you to give Ada a chance.'

'I've done that before...'

'And now you need to do it again. Whatever she gave you she did it for a reason. Or do you honestly think that she's out to hurt you?' Nathan asked with an incredulous grin.

'No, I don't. But despite both of our best intentions I don't think we'll both walk away from this unscathed. It's too complicated for that now.'

'Complicated? You haven't cornered the market on heartache you know.'

'Yeah?' Leon raised a sandy eyebrow, 'Did any of those women ever leave you to bleed to death?'

'Well,' Nathan looked up at the ceiling with a fond smile, 'your mother once locked me out of the car when we broke down on a deserted highway one night.'

'Forgot to fill up the gas-tank?' Leon smiled.

'Among other things,' he chuckled at the ambiguity of his answer as he thought back to the _complications_ of that night, 'Tell me something about her.'

'About Ada?'

'Yeah. I never got the chance to...to see you grow up. You can tell a lot about a man by looking at his tastes in women,' Nathan was composed in his reply but there was something affected about his smile. It had stayed on his face for far too long, it was hard and grafted rather than smooth and easy, 'What's Ada like? She must be pretty special to you.'

Leon exhaled noisily and fidgeted against the blanket, feeling suddenly hot and uncomfortable, 'Describe Ada? I don't know how to...begin with something like that. Describing her is like describing the taste of coffee to someone who's never tasted a drop. Ada's not just a woman, she's an experience. There were moments in Spain, just tiny, little fragments of time, when I felt as though I knew her better than anyone else in the world. But when those moments were over, it felt as though she was just a stranger to me. That makes no sense does it?'

'If she's such a stranger,' Nathan continued pragmatically despite his son's increasingly downtrodden mood, 'then why don't you give her the benefit of the doubt before rejecting her like this?'

'Because her past actions follow a pretty distinct pattern with a punch-line that involves her pointing a gun to my head,' Leon rubbed his temple and squeezed his eyes shut, 'Listen, I don't think that Ada is a bad person. I know that she doesn't set out to hurt anyone... She has a job and a life that I don't envy, but in a way I understand what it's like for her; to not be able to talk to anyone about her day without being scared that she's going to let slip something sensitive and life threatening. I know that not everything she does is in her hands. That's exactly the reason I don't totally blame here, but it's also the reason I want to keep my distance.'

'You were pretty hard on her just now.'

He blinked at his father in surprise, 'I'm supposed to trust a figment of my imagination?'

'No. You're supposed to trust your instincts. They're yelling at you but you're too angry to hear them, just like I was when I was with your mother...' Nathan replied sombrely, his gaze never leaving his son's face, 'Maybe Ada is trying to show you who she really is by giving you that information in Spain. It's not the conventional way, granted, but this woman is hardly the traditional type. I think that's why you like her so much. Perhaps this is Ada's way of communicating; through actions, not words.'

Lacing his fingers together, Leon simply shook his head. The way things were right now he may as well be on another planet.

'I'm a mess, aren't I?' he asked running a hand roughly through his hair, 'Shit. I was only around her for a matter of minutes and it feels like years. I can't face Ada right now. Not even in my dreams. It's too much. I need time away from this. And you don't need to sit there silently judging me. I know what I am. I'm a guy who only feels in control of his emotions when he has a gun in his hand and it suits me just fine.'

'So you're going to what? Pretend she's not out there anymore?'

'That's one option, yeah. At least until I've got my head together again,' Leon replied cagily, 'Can't we talk about something else?'

'Like what?'

'I don't know....you could tell me what it's like to be dead.'

'And spoil life's biggest punch line? I don't think so,' his father shrugged apologetically and rotated his wrist to get a glimpse of his army-issue watch, 'It doesn't matter right now anyway. You're about to land.'

'About to _what_?' Leon asked, but there was no reply as the white room switched to black.

---

'Leon.'

Recoiling away from the sound of his name, Leon opened his eyes to the sight of Ashley leaning over him and peering into his face. She collapsed hastily back into the seat next to his, giving him a baffled, guilty stare. The cocoon of the jet's body reconstituted itself around him, circling him in the comforting and the familiar again. The engines were hushed and the storm had long been left behind to cower on the other side of the ocean. He felt a little safer.

'We've landed and the pilot wants us to...' she started, but her voice melted away.

Leon's fingers clumsily flew to his seatbelt as he strived desperately to reacclimatise himself to reality. Somehow his world felt dialled down again, like he'd put on a pair of shades in the midday sun.

'How long was I asleep?' he asked breathlessly, sitting up straight to project some kind of confidence to his already worried young charge.

'The whole flight. You were totally out of it. I was worried when I couldn't wake you.'

'I'm sorry Ashley. I must have passed out,' he told her as though it were nothing, like he'd just stubbed his toe.

'It's okay, she mumbled, 'I'm just glad you decided to join us again.'

Leon stared at her thoughtfully for a moment, taking in her tired eyes and sallow complexion, 'Hey. Your dad's out there,' he said softly, relaxing as he saw her face light up, 'Let's not keep him waiting.'

---

If there was anything that whispered home to him, it was the granite seal beneath his feet of an eagle poking its head up from behind a large, white shield. It glinted and winked at him under indeterminable layers of floor polish.

_Welcome home Leon._

It had been over twenty four hours since he and Ashley had landed in Washington. Watching the girl throw her arms around her exhausted father's neck, Leon had smiled fondly at a job well done. Their next stop had been the secure wing of a private hospital where they were prodded, scanned and groped to insure that everything was in working order and that any remnants of parasites or drugs were long gone. The white water rush of relief that had followed their clean bills of health had been exhilarating, but Leon was still half tempted to ask for another CAT scan and a psych test. After bidding Ashley a 'see you soon' and gently extracting himself from her enthusiastic hug, Leon had taken a hire car over to Langley and the head quarters of the CIA. He'd been debriefed at the hospital. Not much had gone on without him. Mitchell had left him a message which simply read:

_Good job. Get some rest. And yes, that's an order._

The pristine building that housed the command centre of the CIA rose like a giant three-tiered wedding cake from the elaborate and painfully clipped gardens that surrounded it. He'd set foot inside for the first time over five years before and to this day it made him grin like an idiot. The rush of feet across the halls, the slamming of doors, the thick, woody scent of furniture polish, the voices that slid layer upon layer over the room before bursting through the roof and the welcoming portraits that hung in the lobby: it almost made him forget what it was they did here and the decisions they made behind these immaculate walls.

With his ID badge clipped to his chest, Leon straightened the front of his navy shirt and approached the front desk. He was within a few feet of the reception when Jennifer Miles, the silver-haired agent stationed behind of it, lifted her head and greeted him with a distracted nod. Her headset was plugged into her ear, a muffled stream of heated dialogue flowing from it. She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and yawned.

'I didn't expect to see you here so early Sunshine. I suppose Mitchell's order to relax was open to interpretation,' she inspected him from over the rim of her narrow glasses, 'He won't be happy about....' she frowned suddenly and tore her hand from the headset, 'Yes. Yes Senator I understand. But unfortunately I don't decide the director's schedule and if her grandmother is ill then there is nothing that I or anyone else here can...'

She rolled her eyes as the caller interrupted her again. Jennifer had been working at the CIA since the early seventies. She watched the young agents come and go and she fetched coffee and biscuits for the senior executives. But if you knew her as well as Leon did you'd soon realise that she was the most valuable and highly informed administrator in the building's history. She knew everyone within these walls, a silent sentry behind a smile as warm as a freshly baked pie and a mind as sharp as a razor.

Leon propped his hip against the desk, 'Rough day?'

'Rough week,' she amended, pressing the cough button on her headset, 'Three conferences weren't properly catered for and there was a major mishandling of the latest stationary order so I've got three senior agents on my back about not having enough pencils. As if I don't have enough work to do....' she snatched her finger from the button, 'Yes Senator Wayne, I'm listening to you very closely but as I said before... Damn it. He's hung up. The guy's an asshole.'

For a seemingly sweet lady she cursed like a sailor.

'What was that all about?' Leon asked as Jennifer threw off her headset in disgust.

'Director Gregory has cancelled all of her meetings for the next week and I have to deal with the aftermath. She's told me to tell everyone that her grandmother died.'

'And...did she?'

'No,' she waved her hands and laughed at him with delight, 'Her dog's broken his leg. But of course I can't go around telling that to everyone.'

'You're an angel Jenny,' he replied with a quick smile as he glanced past her towards the elevators, 'Is Isaac in his office?'

'Where else?' she rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion, 'He's been in there non-stop since last night so you better brace yourself.'

'I will,' his lips twisted and he frowned, knowing exactly what was waiting beyond the foyer, 'How's Alex?'

'There's been no change,' her smile weakened slightly, 'He really enjoyed your visit last week though.'

'Tell him I'll come by again. Maybe I'll bring Tess next time.'

'Dogs aren't allowed in hospitals Agent Kennedy. Especially not your little beast,' she scolded him theatrically, 'But I'm sure you'll find a way around that,' Jenny reached over to the shrill, ringing phone on her desk and glanced at the screen, 'Ah. Commander Neil's office calling for Director Gregory. Here we go again.'

Leon grinned slyly and pushed off the desk, 'Good luck Jenny.'

'You too Sunshine. You too.'

After several ID checks and retinal scans he made it to the door of Isaac Yates. He knocked twice, but when no answer was forthcoming, Leon let himself in.

Isaac was their resident chief technical expert and a hoarder of junk. His laboratory was usually a no go area when Isaac was in one of his 'moods' but Leon was desperate. Normally he'd track down one of Isaac's assistants when the man himself was climbing the walls but they were either busy or absent at this time of day.

Having graduated from Oxford University, Isaac had been headhunted as soon as he'd stepped foot out of his graduation ceremony almost twenty years ago. He was damn good at his job, but he loathed being tracked down by young agents in the need of basic technical support whether it be a computer virus or a broken monitor. He preferred the more complex and high profile projects. He had a set of lofty, self-regulated standards. His laboratory was huge, piled high with broken computers and its floors were lost under a tangle of wires. It was a cyber-jungle, home to a grumbling tiger of a technician, over-worked and under-fed. But despite the fact that the guy stopped short of leaving teeth marks in his visitors, he and Leon had developed an understanding once Isaac realised that this government agent wasn't easy to frighten away. And Leon wasn't ruling out the chance that one day Isaac might even grow to like him.

'All right, whoever you are!' Isaac screamed, his head deep inside the innards of one of his computer terminals, 'Don't touch anything, don't do anything and for god's sake don't step on anything!'

_Hmm. Friendlier greeting than usual._

'It's me,' Leon replied, stepping over a pile of plastic casings.

'Christ! Kennedy, you bastard,' Isaac laughed, his crisp East London accent muffled by the machine he was currently dissecting, 'I heard you were back,' he grunted and stood up, stretching his thin, brown arms over his head, 'I thought you were on leave! You're the only employee here that's eligible to start paying rent for the hours you haunt this place. I'm glad not all the agents here have as much trouble getting laid as you do. This place would never be empty.'

Leon held his hand out in the vague direction of the wall to give him some stability as he negotiated Isaac's minefield of expensive junk, 'You know that was pretty weak, even for you. I'd like to think I'm worth a better put down.'

Isaac was dressed in thick, brown cords rolled up at the cuffs and a lavender shirt stained with coffee and sweat. A silver watch dangled from his thin wrists. His hair was knotted into a dozen, tight black braids and his thick, angular glasses where sliding perilously off the tip of his nose.

'I'm tired, all right?'

Sniffing the air, Leon wrinkled his nose, 'What the hell's that?'

'That?' Isaac asked casually, 'Well it could be from one of the five terminals that have blown up over the past twenty four hours. Or it could be due to the fact that I've just completed two consecutive shifts and haven't been able to shower yet.'

Isaac nodded at the nearby desk indicating that Leon should sit down. Not knowing whether to shift the delicate debris from the top of the work stool, he simply perched himself on the edge of the desk, his shoes scuffing the rough, concrete floor.

'They've made you work that long without a break?' Leon asked, 'Maybe I'm not the only one who needs some action.'

'I get plenty, thank you very much,' Isaac replied hotly, but a smile was lifting the shallow wrinkles of his face.

'Just don't tell your wife,' Leon muttered back as he searched for somewhere safe to stand so he wouldn't get singed by a loose, flapping wire.

'Ouch,' Isaac chuckled, 'What can I do for you Pretty Boy? I'm busy and I don't have time to help yet another agent delete his internet history. A little advice, use your _own_ computer for recreational activities.'

'Very funny, but it's a little more complicated than that. I need to borrow something.'

Isaac removed his glasses, rubbed his red-rimmed eyes with the back of his hand, 'Well I'm paid by the hour so please take your time.'

Reaching into his pocket Leon pulled out the small, black cylinder and waved it under Isaac's hooked nose.

His eyelids almost peeled back as he gazed at the object, 'Colour me intrigued. May I?'

Without waiting for a reply, Isaac plucked the object from Leon's fingers and opened it, spilling the film out into his hands.

'Interesting,' he muttered, his tone weak and insipid, 'Where did you find this?'

'The records room,' Leon lied smoothly, 'It was unmarked, probably fell out of an old folder or something. We think it could be useful information.'

'Unlikely,' Isaac scoffed, 'This is just sixteen millimetre microfilm. The manufacturer is nothing unusual and there are millions of these little buggers floating around Washington alone. This kind of thing hasn't been produced widely since the early eighties at the latest. It was used mostly during the early twentieth century but beyond that it has been made almost completely redundant by modern image storage techniques. Whatever's on here must be decades old at least. You might as well send it down to the archives.'

_Must have been why she used it. She didn't just want to give me the information, she wanted to give it to me in her own way, with her own style. Classic, noir, rare and complicated. Just like her._

'Never judge data by its format,' Leon replied with a casual shrug, 'Do you have a reader and printer I could use?'

Tossing him back the cylinder, Isaac grunted, 'Fine. Try in the back. I should have a few data readers lying around. Just don't...'

'Don't touch anything,' Leon interrupted dryly, 'Yeah. I got it. Thanks Isaac.'

As the belligerent technician collapsed wearily into his chair, Leon made his way into the back of the lab. It took him almost ten minutes but he was able to locate a cabinet labelled 'Microform Reader'. He opened it and extracted a large, cream-coloured monitor. Within minutes he'd set up the simple device and fed the film into it. And then he waited, staring almost blankly at the monitor, the words blurring into jagged lines on the too-bright screen.

It was then that he realised he shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be in this building right now. He should be at home curled up on his couch with his dog, the TV remote in one hand, a beer in the other. What he should have done is hand this data straight into Mitchell's hands and wash himself clean of every speck of Spain and Ada Wong.

However, if he did, then that would be the last he'd ever see of the film. Mitchell would give the data to Harris and Leon would be barred from that operation for at least the next ten years. Ada had given him the data for a reason. Whether that reason was, fair or foul, he needed to see it for himself. He knew that he wouldn't be able to sleep if he didn't know what was on it. And he _needed_ a good night's sleep.

Taking a deep breath Leon leaned forward and began to read.

_What you read here may shock you, but I beg you, don't discard it or hand it in to those above you. If you can find it in your heart to do so, please, have faith in me. The stronger the trust, the greater the betrayal. You know that and so do I. But you are braver than I am so I've offered this to you. Just you Leon. No one else. _

_Deep down I know that I don't have the right to ask anything of you, in fact I've given you every reason not to believe a word I say. Your first instincts are telling you to destroy this or get rid of it somehow. If you did, I wouldn't be able to find it in my heart to blame you. _

_Nevertheless, as you read the documents contained here you'll see how urgent this matter is for both our sakes. But no matter what course of action you decide to take, I trust your judgement._

_-Ada._

_---_

Not one of my favourite chapters (those ones are yet to come) but I do like it. There were bits about this I really enjoyed, particularly Leon oh-so-slightly hopped up on medicine. I wish I could tell you that the next chapter will end on a cliff-hanger less cruel than this one...but I'm not a liar so I won't. Instead I can give you the good news that a mini-update is due on Friday. Until next time!


	6. Heart of Ice

**Faith**

_Baby-sized update in five...four...three...two...one..._

**Chapter 6**

**Heart of Ice**

_There is no deceit in death. It delivers precisely what it has promised._

_-- Steven Deitz_

Very few people ever stop and take the time to truly contemplate the sound of their own heartbeat. The heart is so important, yet at times so inconspicuous that it is easy to forget that it is there inside of you, beating constantly and writhing through your chest, feeding and cleansing you throughout your entire life.

Ada Wong no longer took her own heartbeat for granted because it echoed through the water around her, magnified by the startling cold and the ringing in her ears. It both relieved and tormented her. It told her that she was alive, but also that she was still on the cusp of death, as she had been so skilfully kept for the past five days since Wesker had captured her.

The shock of that first time in the tank had almost broken her there and then. It had began with the shards of ice that had skewered her skin, then the overwhelming pressure of the water in her ears, the sharp contraction of her airways, the sting of chemicals on her eyes and pressure of her palms against the edge as she tried to claw her way through the glass like an animal.

She had never been a fan of the cold. When she had been about seven years old her mother had taken her to Canada to stay at a dry and culturally vapid commune in the mountains. It had been their fifth fresh start in a row. Whilst her mother had served milkshakes at a half-empty diner in the main part of the town and sang to those who didn't have the time or energy to hear her, Ada had snuck away from the warm pulse of the establishment and past the drunk and desolate wardens that slept all night and day at the barriers between the wilderness and the barren valley of the town. Weaving through the tall pickets of the forest in the dark, she had wandered too far and found herself stranded in a space where she could barely see her own hand in front of her face. She had curled up in a moist and empty cavern till dawn, mindlessly alive within a rock tomb.

At first, fresh light, half-numb and alone, Ada had made her way back towards the town, cradling her blue, shaking hands against her chest. After about ten or so minutes she had found herself in front of a frozen lake that stretched like a diamond across the forest and broke up the thick gathering of trees as if something had torn a scrap of the forest from the ground. The sky was cloudy, looking soft to the touch as though the heavens had already prepared the snow for the coming winter and was just waiting to deliver it to the earth. As she had drifted slowly along the edge of the water, following its jagged and almost artfully uneven bank, Ada had spotted a wink of silver beneath the thin crust of the ice, like a tiny star. Now she laughs inwardly as she remembers it, because with her eyes closed and her body deadened by the cold in the tank she can see it all, clearer than it had ever been since that day.

As she had knelt closer to the edge of the lake she had seen that the silver wasn't a trick of the light. It was a piece of jewellery, a bulky silver pendant hanging by a piece of thick, black cord from a dead man's neck. His chunky face was frozen just inches from the surface of the ice, his body, his wounds and the moment of his death preserved just for her. All it had missed was a tiny tag.

'_A little girl's_ _first corpse.'_

Ada hadn't paused even for a moment during the run back to the town. When she had found her mother, fast asleep and ignorant of her daughter's absence throughout the night, Ada had tried to explain what she had seen. But she had not been listened to or believed. Her mother had forced her by the fireside and told her that she was delirious from the cold and not to be listened to. The older woman had had her own problems to concern herself with, such as the stolen dollar bills from the till of the only diner in the town that she had hidden under her pillow.

They had left the area shortly after that day so Ada had never had the chance to rediscover that lost soul, to watch and study it, to allow it to frighten her because any experience, whether pleasurable or painful, was better than the anesthetised hollow of her childhood. As she had grown up and schooled herself in the deadly arts she had discovered that during the hours or days or weeks of an assignment the heart of an assassin was the same as that lake; an icy waste where the memories of the dead are frozen solid at the moment of their demise like a macabre display or a scrapbook of mortality.

And this was why, right here and now, Ada Wong could see a thousand faces before her, first the man of the lake and then the others in turn, the guilty she had judged; all this because her heart could echo through water and open those memories up to her.

Ada gasped as the mechanism was pulled and her heavy, water drenched body was dragged out of the glass tank. The taste of oxygen was like an acid burn inside her lungs as she was birthed back into the land of the living. Her blue lips shivered as she flexed her wrists against the restraints that held her up, the cold metal pressing ribbons into her translucent skin. Her teeth were colliding and crackling against each other. The thin, white undergarments she wore were stuck to her soaking skin. Her joints were made stiff by crystals of ice. She had been in the water so long that she could barely move at will. Nevertheless, her body quivered involuntarily and underwent sudden bursts of spasms driven by the electric kiss of ice water and out of her control. She inhaled deeply several times as her vision returned to something approximating normal, but there was nothing worthwhile to see. Just a black room with low lights and an observation box in front of her with the silhouettes of two unmoving and impassive spectators.

'We could stop this now Ada,' Wesker sounded apathetic over the announcement system, 'This can all be over soon.'

'Why?' Ada asked scathingly, locking her jaw to dampen the trembling of her voice, 'Do you need a break?'

There was a moment of silence as he processed, or maybe even admired, her sarcasm. This was why he kept her around; they both knew that. She never bored him.

Ada slumped, drained and quaking against her restraints, as she waited for him to speak again as he always did. It had been like this for days now. She'd be dragged from her cell in the early hours of the morning and taken, chained and blindfolded, to another larger room that held a tank of subzero water. She would be stripped and placed into the tank where the depravation of oxygen, warmth and food would slowly waste her body away. Several times she had had to be resuscitated when they had kept her down for too long; dragged kicking and screaming from the gaping mouth of death, her soul shredded against its teeth every time. The process would be repeated until late into the night when she'd be taken back to her cell and allowed to rest, cradled in the dry darkness, her pillow the cracked earth above countless, ancient graves. Wesker would simply watch from afar for as long as he chose. Ada didn't know if he was taking pleasure from what he was doing to her or if he saw the time he spent observing her torture as simply an investment towards the outcome he truly desired.

'This is a waste of time,' Wesker continued sternly.

'Well don't let me keep you if you have something better to do,' she hissed, though she doubted that he could hear her.

'How much longer can you go on like this Ada? The longest anyone has held out during this technique is two weeks, but they didn't live for more than a few days afterwards. Are you willing to die for the Plagas sample?'

She refused to answer, simply burying her cheek into her shoulder and closing her eyes.

'Or are you prepared to sacrifice others? I can get a lot done in two weeks,' Wesker muttered with dark and caustic delight dripping from every word like thick, black venom, 'All I have to do is give the order and Leon Kennedy is a dead man walking. Is that what you'd prefer?'

Ada's body trembled as her chest seized up suddenly and she tasted a chill even more bitter than the one she had been enduring for the past five days.

'He doesn't have to die Ada. I am not prone to wasting my resources. Leon retrieved President Graham's brat from Spain and since he is being blocked from the Umbrella investigation by my operative inside the CIA he is not an urgent target. That is, unless slicing his throat will bring me my sample.'

'I don't give a damn about him!' Ada retaliated urgently, her fingers curling and twisting against the chains, 'Do whatever the fuck you want to with Kennedy. He's not my concern and he never was.'

_Just leave Leon alone. Don't hurt him. Don't you dare._

'Then what is your concern Ada? What do you want out of all of this?'

Strands of her midnight were tangled over her forehead and eyes. She glared through the white spots that danced over her vision and looked towards Wesker's booth.

'Did you know Wesker...' she began, her breath condensing against her blue lips, 'that my mother was a singer? She had this beautiful voice, the only beautiful thing about her in fact. But when I was a child I was never allowed to listen to her. She was always so adamant about that. It was strange. She only seemed to be comfortable on a stage in front of drunks in a bar. Maybe she didn't think that she was worthy of anything better.'

Ada's lips widened as she attempted a slight and almost delirious smile.

'The one and only time I ever heard my mother sing was when I was seven years old. I was ill. I had a sore throat and I couldn't eat solid food,' she sniffed and continued at a juddering and rapid pace in order to keep up with the swift stream of memories, 'My mother worked at a diner in Canada once so she let me come with her to work one day and she made me a banana and raspberry smoothie. It was delicious. I sat in the corner for hours enjoying it. She must have forgotten that I was there because at five o'clock, as always, she went up onto the tiny stage at the head of the diner and sang her heart out. I don't recall the songs themselves but I remember her. I remember how I was...proud of her, just for a moment.'

The dull drumming of Wesker's fingers against the desk rumbled over the speakers, but he remained impatiently mute as he listened to her story. When she fell silent and her eyes closed once more, he called for her attention again.

'Ada...why are you doing this? What do want so badly that you are willing to destroy yourself?' he demanded.

She sighed, nuzzling her chin against her shoulder lazily as an odd sense euphoria wrapped around her like a warm, fur coat, 'I want...I want a banana and raspberry smoothie.'

He paused for a few seconds before he laughed, the deep and short burst of sound chilling the water beneath her, 'Maybe once this is all over I'll do you a favour Ada. When I'm finished with that boy Kennedy I'll bury what's left of him beside you,' his voice was muffled as he turned to the other person in the booth beside him, 'Lower her in. Three and a half minutes this time.'

The machine winched her downwards, her toes the first to be embraced by the water. Her pride was the only thing that held back her urge to whimper; the brittle and worn chains of her confidence and her tenacity had survived intact and would probably do so until she fell apart. Ada prayed that her body would break before her mind did. She didn't want to live to see her own surrender. She took a deep breath.

_At least this is fitting. What better punishment for an Ice Queen than this?_

The seconds beat one by one. Minutes are sluggish against the water. Ada's sense of time and space began to shatter and her body felt lighter as if she could float to the top of the tank on her own. The veins around her skull swelled suddenly, the pressure unbearable. She flinched, thrashing against the rack that held her under. A cloud of milky-white air bubbles gushed out of her mouth and nose, rushing towards the surface of the tank. If there had been time to realise what had happened she may have felt satisfaction, relief, maybe even something a hair's breadth away from happiness. But once her heart stopped there was no time to acknowledge anything at all.

---

_-Ducks flying tomatoes- _

_I did try to warn you guys. I hope this wasn't too cruel a cliff-hanger. I will update again next Wednesday. Take care and thanks so much for the reviews everyone! _


	7. Back to the Beginning

**Faith**

_Author's note: It feels like ages since I last updated and I've been looking forward to this. But I've had all of your reviews to keep me company- thank you! _

**Chapter 7**

**Back to the Beginning**

_Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step._

_--Martin Luther King Jr._

The thumping noise her body made as it crumpled clumsily onto the rug made Leon grimace. Her brown belly rose and fell with every ragged breath and she was making these odd wheezing noises that made his hair stand on end. She gazed up at him, her chocolate-button brown eyes with their widening black pupils silently begging for water.

'I'm sorry girl,' Leon sighed as he ducked down to grab her blue dish and fill it up at the tap.

Tess, his chocolate-brown Labrador, rolled her eyes in relief, nudged past his leg and stuck her snout eagerly into the dish. He knelt beside her and gently tickled the fur behind her droopy ears.

Wiping the beads of sweat that decorated his brow, Leon rose and stretched, grunting as his aching muscles sang 'I told you so!' at him as loudly and as painfully as they could.

He'd jogged too far today. Miles too far. It wasn't until Tess, his usually keen and excitable jogging partner, had stubbornly thrown her ass onto the sidewalk and hacked up her last meal that he realised what he'd done. Rather than take a leisurely three mile jog around the block, he'd run clear across town. Since Tess had been so drowsy and limp-legged, Leon had had to carry all sixty pounds of her back to the apartment and up nine flights of stairs since the elevator was, once again, out.

Now his jogging clothes were soaked and sticking to his skin, he smelled like wet dog, his face was red, spots blinking on and off like Christmas lights before his eyes and his arms and legs were shaking. Chugging back a glass of icy water in one, Leon felt a deep sense of ease through the pain. Sure he hurt, but at least now he was satisfied that his body was in a semi-decent condition. He was on the mend. There was reassurance in pain. Pain was ordinary. It was universal. At least something was going to plan.

It had been two days since he'd wandered dazed and alarmed out of Isaac's office, Ada's message seared into his mind, her words on an endless loop in his head as if she was at his side and whispering into his ear. He hadn't slept. He lived on coffee and Red Bull, fresh fruit, vitamins and toast. He watched TV, laughed at the right moments during those weak and forgettable TV movies that are only played after 2am, and he had kept Tess well-fed and marginally entertained. But beneath the habitual actions of his body his mind was transmitting on a different frequency.

It had taken him several hours to read the documents Ada had given him, to study the photographs and receipts, the bank statements, the flight records and the surveillance reports. Solid, convincing, thorough and meticulous. He hadn't expected anything less from her. But they weren't true. They couldn't be. They had to be a clever work of fiction. The alternative was almost too destructive for him to contemplate. And there had been one term that had been repeated several times in the fragmented transcripts but never explained or expanded on- 'Project Lazarus'.

There was nothing in the CIA database about such a project or operation. Wandering the compound for short, dry and fruitless hours, Leon had seriously considered coming clean and dropping the film on Mitchell's desk. But every time he'd made the move to approach his superior's office he had hesitated and turned away from the varnished walnut door. There was that doubt, right there in the back of his skull like a troublesome insect. There'd be hell to pay once he was found out, but if there was even a single grain of truth in this information then he was bound by duty, decency and his heart to investigate, if only to prove it wrong.

It had to be wrong.

But so far he'd found little to prove it either way. Every avenue he took, he ended up stonewalled. Now he sat poised beside his phone like some kind of obsessive teenager with a crush, just waiting for his contacts to call. But he'd only told his sources the bare minimum of what he wanted. As a result, the investigations were taking days.

One separate investigation had gone as planned however. Leon had spent an entire afternoon browsing police records and found single, discreet newspaper clipping from the winter of 1982.

_Nathan Kennedy, an ex-Officer of the U.S Army, was found stabbed to death outside McMillan's Bar during the early hours of Tuesday 14__th__ December 1982. His blood alcohol content had been 0.21%. The weapon was found at the scene but the fingerprints didn't yield any match in the database. Patrons of the bar had overheard an argument between the victim and an unknown man concerning the repayment of a debt before Kennedy had left the bar via the side exit. No witnesses to the actual crime, if any, have come forward. _

The case had been dropped after a few weeks.

His dream hadn't been a fantasy. It had been the truth. And everything he felt he knew about who his father was and why had been unceremoniously thrown in the garbage.

Leon wearily kicked off his shoes and collapsed into the leather armchair in the corner of his living-room. The legs of the chair screeched as his body weight shoved them backwards a few inches along the oak floor of his bizarrely empty apartment. He'd never had the time to decorate the place despite living in it on and off for the past year. The soft cream colour of the walls ran unbroken throughout the property and over the crumbled boarder patterns that skirted the ceiling. The place was far bigger than he needed but he liked the space. It helped him think. At the end of the room towered a set of glass doors, framed by gauzy, pale blue curtains, which lead out onto a small balcony that overlooked the chaotic, endless scrawl of the cityscape. His photographs, posters and paintings were in boxes in his closet and there was never enough time to open them. Or rather, he had yet to feel that it was the right time to open those boxes and declare to the world and to himself that this was his home now.

But there is a single photograph bared to the open air. It stands like a sentry on the mantle of his empty fire place. It was gilded silver from the light of the full moon that has just been uncloaked outside his window. It was about the only thing he'd been able to unpack in the last few days. There was a sandy haired kid, eight years and four months old exactly, struggling with a kite in the autumn breeze. The deep red canvas head of the kite had later lodged in the golden branches of a chestnut tree and the boy had begged his step-father to go up and rescue the stubborn thing despite the fact that it had only cost five dollars. They could have bought another. But no. He'd wanted _that_ kite, not any other, not even if it was identical or more expensive or better designed for the merciless breezes of downtown Los Angeles in the fall. His father, his _real_ father, had bought him that kite, though he hadn't been alive to help him learn how to use it. This had been its first time out of the box in three years and somehow it had impaled itself on a branch.

Leon lifted his restless body from the chair and padded barefoot to the mantle, wrapping his fingers around brass photo frame that was heavy with memories. His statically vibrant past was colliding with the vibrant static of his present and making a silent mockery of his future. He lifted the photograph back to its designated spot as warden over his depressingly vacant apartment. But it didn't look quite right there. He tried moving it a few inches to the left, then back to the centre trying to remember where the hell it was supposed to go. It was a full five minutes before he realised that he didn't give a damn.

_Is that how desperate I am to have something to do? If someone had told me two years ago that I'd eventually end up mourning an Umbrella-less existence I'd have laughed out loud. Or maybe just punched them in the face. _

But now it was almost true. He'd been under the radar back then, working for the underground resistance, sleeping in the back of his truck, living on bags of potato chips and foul-smelling coffee; he'd ended up where he was needed the most. But now he didn't know where he belonged.

He eased his tired body back into his chair as Tess ambled over sleepily, yawned and settled her head onto his lap, her paws pressing heavily on his thighs and her claws picking at the fabric of his pants. Leon smiled down at her warmly. She had a missing patch of fur on her forehead from a nasty run-in with a pit-bull around the corner of the local diner. And though old, she had a reserve of energy that regularly put him to shame. Her youthful soul powered through her creaky joints and stringy muscles.

'Hello beautiful,' he muttered.

She wagged her tail lethargically, slapping her demands against the floorboards in an erratic rhythm.

'Damn...I forgot. Sorry girl. I've run out of carrot sticks and dog biscuits. I'll buy some in the morning. I promise.'

As if understanding him, Tess slipped off his lap and curled up at his feet. In seconds she was snoring deeply. Leon groaned and shook his head to prevent himself from being dragged down into that abyss with her. When he'd first set eyes on her, Tess had belonged to his neighbour Franklin, a retired, elderly widow. Leon would open his door in the mornings and almost trip over her. She'd sit herself outside his front door every morning and just _stare_ at him as he left for work. It had freaked him out. He had never had pets when he was growing up. Well, he'd had fish, but there'd never been anything higher up in the food-chain.

'Looks like you've found yourself a new admirer Mr Kennedy,' Franklin had chuckled one day, 'She doesn't give herself easily you know. You must have a gift. I have to hide dog biscuits in my pocket to get her to follow me around like that.'

Leon had laughed it off for the first few weeks, but over the following months he'd started stocking doggy treats in his cupboards and taking Tess out for long walks when Franklin had been too tired. Then when his neighbour had been admitted into hospital for the last time, Leon hadn't hesitated to watch over her. When Franklin had died there had been two basic choices. Adopt the dog or see it go to the pound where, due to her age, she'd be highly unlikely to ever find another home.

The choice had been an easy one. And now his furniture had bite marks, half of his shoes were doggy toys, his kitchen smelt like dog food twenty-four hours a day and she left hairs in his bed. Tess wasn't much of babe magnet either, since she growled like a demon when other females got within touching distance of her new master. She was cheeky, playful, as affective against intruders as his gun and she was a matchless and fiercely loyal friend. Before he'd left for Spain, Leon had talked a reluctant friend, who owed him a few dozen favours, to take care of her. But Tess hated his long trips and it would usually take hours of goading to get her to stop sulking.

Leon yawned against the back of his hand. Countless sleepless hours were piling up right in front of him, surrounding him like walls and pushing in, demanding that he sleep.

_I can't sleep. Any minute now and the phone could ring. If I don't pick up then that's it. Informants don't call twice._

He argued with himself once again, twisting against the increasingly plump and soothing chair as his concentration ebbed away.

_Oh you know the real reason Kennedy. You're afraid. You're shit scared that you're going to start dreaming again, about your father, about Ada. And you don't want to risk closing your eyes and finding her on the other side._

Leon rubbed his eyes and smirked at how stupid he was being; how irrational, how galactically foolish. Balling his fists at his sides, he opened his eyes and took a deep gulp of the sooty evening air. He had work to do, reports to look over, people to contact, dog biscuits to buy and he wasn't about to let a little fatigue get in the way.

Looking down he noticed that Tess had left his side, probably to claim the end of his bed as her current napping place. Leon was about drag his body out of the chair when he looked up at the mantle above his cold, disused fireplace. Rising to his feet, he frowned, walked over to the grey mantle and ran his fingers over the vacant surface.

It was gone. The photograph was gone as if it had never existed. Glancing back at the chair he was assured that he hadn't carried it back with him in a fit of absentmindedness.

'You had asked for a kite for Christmas when you were five. It was all you'd talk about back then. For weeks you begged me to let you have it early but I'd always said "no". Maybe I should have let you have it. I would have been able to teach you how to use the damn thing before...before my accident.'

Curling his nails into his palm, Leon turned around at the sound of his father's voice. The room span into focus seconds later, the lag making him dizzy and light on his feet. Just metres in front of him, Nathan Kennedy was leaning against the wall with the photograph in his hands and a grin on his stubble-dusted face. He was casually dressed this time, no uniform in sight, just a green sweater over a white shirt, as if he had stopped by to say 'hi' to his son before attending a Sunday brunch with his golf club.

'Hi... What are you..?' Leon muttered as he looked fleetingly from the fireplace to the chair and back again, 'Wait a...wait a minute. You can't be here right now. I'm not asleep.'

'Oh you're asleep,' Nathan replied enthusiastically pointing to the empty leather chair, 'You're completely out of it in that chair right now as we speak. In the real world your dog is tearing apart one of your sneakers as we speak.'

Leon closed his eyes and smiled, his head hanging in a kind of weary acceptance, 'As expected. Maybe she's commenting on my choice of footwear. So I'm here...well..._you're_ here again. To what do I owe the pleasure?'

Nathan regarded him thoughtfully, 'You don't seem as on edge as you had been the last two times I've dropped by.'

'I guess I have other things on my mind right now.'

'Like what?' his father asked, knowing the answer well enough but wanting his son to elaborate.

'I read Ada's message,' Leon replied, slowly pacing away from the fireplace.

Gently sliding the photograph back onto the mantelpiece, Nathan folded his arms tightly over his chest, 'And? What do you think?'

'I think...' Leon crossed his arms and turned back to his father. On seeing their eerily identical postures and the matching frown-lines between their eyes he smirked and let his arms drop by his sides, 'I don't know what I think anymore. The documents she's given me could completely destroy the balance of my agency whether they're true or not. Over the past few weeks several of the operations that the Anti-Umbrella task force of the CIA were involved in have been compromised. Agents have been killed. I don't know the details, they've been classified, but I can tell that things are falling apart.'

'And what does that tell you?'

He sighed in frustration at his father's poor imitation of a TV shrink, 'It tells me that there's a traitor in the task force; a mole who's selling secrets. And I'm not talking about a desk clerk or a lower level agent. Whoever they are they're head and shoulders above me in the agency. This is high-end stuff, only someone in the upper tiers could go this far and this deep without being caught.'

'Who is it?'

'I don't know. It could be any of dozens of high ranking agents. Ada's given me grainy photographs, bank statements undoubtedly under a false name and a few vague reports. And there's a phrase: "Project Lazarus". I've been trying to investigate it but I'm hitting walls wherever I turn.'

Nathan shrugged his broad shoulders and raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated and almost sarcastic manner, 'So dig harder, push further. Are you just going to give up?'

'Give up?' Leon exclaimed incredulously, 'I shouldn't even be looking at this in the first place. I should have handed it straight into the agency. It's got to be a trap. Wesker must be trying to instigate some kind of witch hunt to draw attention away from his real plans. I'm basing my investigation on vague reports from a woman with an agenda of her own.'

'If Wesker wanted to upset the balance of the agency he could have just sent the information straight to the agency. Why use you and Ada as middle men?' Nathan asked, his tone level, sensible, logical and pissing Leon off.

'Why? Because he's sick bastard who likes playing with people, that's why. This information suggests that one of the senior agents is a traitor. If this information is a setup then I could be jeopardising the career of one of my colleagues. This could end the entire a program; a program that has been running for five years to capture Wesker.'

'And if it's true?' his father continued patiently, 'Don't pull that face at me. I'm serious. If it's true, what then?'

'Then we're all in deep shit,' Leon replied gazing at the floor despondently, 'Either way, no one at the agency is going to give this information the time of day.'

'Except you?'

'Yeah, except me. I'm barred from this case you know? They won't let me near the Umbrella files anymore. If Ada knows this then she could just be manipulating me. She and Wesker could be using me; laying out a trail of breadcrumbs for me to lap up till I've gathered enough so-called evidence to destroy an agent's career and wreck the entire investigation.'

'Do you really believe that this is what's going on?'

Pacing to the balcony, Leon looked out to find the streets totally silent, the roads cleansed of cars and people, shops open yet empty, the sky not streaked by planes and clouds. All he could hear was the tender rush of the wind. He braced his forearm against the window and tapped his fingers on the thin panes of glass that lead out onto the terrace. Only in his dreams would Washington DC look like this in the evening.

'I'm not sure,' he smiled softly at his blue-tinted reflection, 'Either way, there is a mole in the CIA. But if I give them Ada's raw information then they'd just throw it in the trash. They wouldn't trust her as a source, not in a million years.'

'Not unless you can prove her right.'

Leon winced, 'I'm trying. But there's nothing to find. I've used every contact available, I've gone through records. I know where to look but what does it matter if there's nothing to find?'

'Well...' Nathan drawled, 'When you were investigating Umbrella you didn't have access to government informants. You had to use your wits and go underground.'

'I can't do that.'

'Why not? The CIA's made you soft hasn't it?'

Leon span around, 'I can't do that because those contacts were made up of Russian, Chinese Middle Eastern and Korean intelligence operatives and freelance agents. If I'm caught even mentioning their names I'll be thrown in a federal prison faster than you can say "busted". If Ada is right then I could secure the stability of the Anti-Umbrella operation and out the mole. I could find out what the hell "Project Lazarus" is. But if she's lying to me or if she's just plain mistaken then I'm going to lose my job at the very least and cause a national incident at the most.'

Nathan nodded sagely, 'This is why you've been hesitating to go further?'

'D'you blame me?'

'Not for a second Leon. But you're going to have to choose soon-'

'I know, I know!' he interrupted harshly, wishing that seeing his father again hadn't made him feel like a five year old begging for an extra twenty minutes before bedtime, 'That doesn't make the decision any easier. If anything, it makes it twice as hard.'

'Can you think of something that might help that decision along Son?'

Leon threw his head back and gazed up at the ceiling through his long, blonde bangs. He shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled a hundred and one options in his head like a Vegas card shark, all combinations and all possibilities forming a big, fat zero. Before he could mount another scrambling scavenger hunt through his conscious, a thick, rancid odour stung his nose. Blood, rotting flesh in the summer heat, gun powder, chemicals. His lips parted in shock as a thousand memories were triggered instead.

_Wait a minute....I remember..._

He bolted up and tried to take a step towards his father. He almost slipped, his feet dragged out from under him by a thick carpet of sludge. Alarmed and stifled under a poisonous mist of methane and garbage, Leon erupted into a coughing fit. His hand flew to his nose as the other shot out to steady him against another tumble. His eyes began to glint under the acidic, filthy air. He was submerged almost up to his knees. Pitching backwards, his shoulder collided with a thick, beige wall. In front of him he could make out a long tunnel stretching out into nowhere. Its entrance was barricaded by silver bars like thin, steel teeth. The room was cavernous, awash with echoes, distant moans and the scratching of creatures several times larger than any rodent nature could turn out. The underground network was wrenching apart at the seams, little by little with every battle, every rattling gunshot and the echo of every death. There were no windows and the ceiling reached upwards into blackness. Towers of discarded waste flanked him on both sides: toxic refuse, indeterminable month's worth of a city's garbage, a rotten diary of lives now lost above.

But even in the face of all that he knew that this place was somehow less disturbing, less disgusting and less offensive than what was going on at the surface. The sewer was an unlikely refuge; a refuge he and others had once sought. He was back in the sewers of Raccoon City, under the RPD before the destruction of the city.

Leon steadied himself, gripping the damp, moist wall beside him with his right hand as a sudden urge to throw up eliminated all other reflexes. The detail of this dream, the noise, the smell, it was so hideously perfect.

'I don't believe this...' he said out loud, 'I never thought I'd see this place again.'

'This was a turning point in your life. You can't leave it behind,' Nathan spoke from behind him, 'Whatever's here can't hurt you. Not this time. Trust me Leon. Just follow this through. Wait and watch.'

_For what?_

Seconds later an explosion roared through the dump site. Leon felt the wet, slimy floor shift beneath him as the walls rumbled. Then he heard a sharp intake of breath. But it wasn't his. Or Nathan's. As the noise died down, Leon pushed away from the wall and waded through the lake of filth, foul droplets flying up and licking at his face as he moved. He rounded a corner towards a platform at the edge of the dump.

Just as he'd thought, they weren't alone.

'Ada?'

When she didn't so much as twitch he called out to her a little louder.

The beautiful Asian woman once again didn't react despite the resonating echo of her name as it spiralled towards ceiling and towards the city streets above. Her dark eyes didn't sweep over to meet his and her lips didn't curve into the knowing smile that always blew his heart to pieces. Her dark red dress was luminous against the drab decor of the sewer and its swaying shadows. She looked like an exotic, crimson bird perched on the grey branches of a dying tree. She was waiting, her slim fingers curled around her gun, her eyes dark and weary, her chest swelling as she breathed. Leon could detect a slight shudder rippling through her otherwise composed frame, like a hairline crack slicing through a glass windshield.

'She can't hear you Leon,' Nathan called out as he slowly strode towards him, wading effortlessly through the sludge, 'She can't see you either.'

_Just like the first dream._

'So I'm invisible because this is the past? Just like last time?' Leon asked, his eyes fixed on Ada's sombre expression.

'Yes. You can't change the past, but you can change the future. So you're invisible in the former, not in the latter. At least that's the way I try to remember it.'

The deafening whine of machinery followed as the industrial door at the end of the dump site wrenched open its rusty jaws. A stumbling figure emerged from inside, clutching his shoulder and dragging himself through the filth. He was covered in blood. It dribbled slowly onto his blue uniform, was splattered on his face and dried into the lank strands of his fair hair. Leon cringed in sympathy as the memories returned and the younger man's pain was once again his own. It was as if he was able to connect to his younger self's conscious through the experiences and sensations they shared. The present and the past were no different when it came to sensation; pleasure or pain.

The young cop paused and lifted his head jadedly, his blue eyes almost black in the low light. His voice sounded gravelly and broken as he called out for her and she answered him, an edge of desperation making her voice waver slightly. The younger Leon reached her and hauled himself up onto the ledge, his nails scraping the concrete floor.

'This bullet wound isn't making things any easier,' the young man groaned, a self-deprecating smirk on his face as he tried in vain to make light of the situation.

He tipped over suddenly and his knees hit the ground. All the while Ada watched on, standing before him and looking down. Her eyes were wide with shock as she gazed at him, but the cop was oblivious. He was too busy trying to stay conscious.

Leon edged forward slowly as he watched them. He knew that neither of them could hear nor see him, but he was careful and quiet none the less. Ada crouched to her knees and placed both hands on the rookie cop's shoulders.

'Quiet Leon. I'll patch you up,' she ordered him gently pushing him till he sat on the floor.

With firm and skilled movements, Ada unbuttoned his uniform and gently tugged off the tight white t-shirt he'd been wearing underneath. The officer kept as still as he could, wincing or groaning occasionally as he slumped in the corner and left himself open to her tenderly efficient mercy.

Leon bit his knuckle absent-mindedly as he watched. His recollections of this time are vague at best. He remembered falling in and out of consciousness, waking up seemingly minutes later to find Ada had bandaged him up and redressed him as if by magic. He'd caught her then, staring at him almost accusingly and a little awkwardly like she didn't know what to say to him. It had been puzzling. Why had she looked as though she resented him? Then she'd sobered and declared her determination to leave this place and he hadn't argued back. He hadn't even taken the time to press her further about why she'd disappeared and left him. Perhaps he'd just been too busy wondering why his first word and his only thought after waking up with that bullet wound had been 'Ada'.

'Why am I watching this?' Leon asked his father, 'I know what happens next.'

'Give it a chance for once,' Nathan replied, his voice just as low as his son's.

He stood beside Leon and looked around the dumpsite with unguarded disgust and wonder, 'Must have been one of hell of a thrill to go one on one with a mutant crocodile.'

'Alligator. It was an alligator,' Leon mumbled, his eyes stubbornly trained on Ada's movements.

Nathan rolled his eyes, 'Whatever.'

Ada was now, with aching precision, refastening the buttons of the cop's uniform and letting him slowly fall unconscious against the wall, his legs tucked under him and his eyes shut. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders to stop him from bumping his head against the wall. No wonder time had flown by so fast; he'd only been half-conscious the entire time. Ada let him go, rocked back on her heels and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.

Suddenly she heard a small beeping noise and reached into a concealed pocket beneath the hem of her dress. In her hands she held a tiny silver PDA, its miniature screen flashing and beeping to signal an incoming message.

'Wesker...' Leon muttered in recognition as Ada's lips silently mouthed the man's name.

She blankly stared at the screen, her thumb twitching over the activation switch but failing to press down. She glanced despairingly at the sleeping cop by her side and tightened her grip on the device. Leon pushed his way through the grime to stand just inches from her. Whilst standing at a lower level, his view of her was quite different from what he was used to. Despite being mere inches away, she seemed to be standing on a tower, miles above him and completely unreachable.

And he wanted to touch her, to reach out, but he knew that, in more ways than one, he'd just be grasping air. He could see the bruises and dirt that covered her face, the trance-like focus of her eyes. He could smell the blood on them both and taste the memories like grains of salt on his tongue. Her short, dark hair was plastered to her forehead with perspiration and she looked about ready to crumple into a pile by her sleeping companion's side. But rather than take a seat beside the young officer, Ada rose to her feet and backed away from his sleeping form. Her back pressed against the edge of the rusty ladder that led out of the urban swamp. She half-turned and wrapped her hand over the first rung as she prepared to ascend. Then she slid one foot on to the bottom rung and began to climb.

_She's going to...leave without me. She was going to leave me again._

His heart thumped heavily in his chest, anger fresh and sweet in the back of his throat. Before Leon could do so much as turn away, Ada stopped, one hand suspended between one handhold and another. Then she simply let go of the ladder, her feet dropping the three feet to the ground. She walked towards the edge of the platform, raised her arm above her head and threw the PDA at his head. The device sliced inches past Leon's face and embedded itself neatly into the centre of the nearest mound of garbage. It sunk into the waste with a soft squelching sound that suffocated its insistent beeping.

With his lips crafted into an 'o', Leon looked back at Ada curiously. She leaned heavily against the wall behind her and gradually slid to the floor. Gathering her knees in front of her, she rested her head and arms against them. She was trembling again, her bare shoulders shivering as if this place was submerged into the depths of winter, not a forty degree heat. She looked smaller like this. Almost pocket-sized.

Leon wasn't aware that he was holding his breath until his chest began to ache. And then he remembered it all. He remembered Ada climbing the ladder half way up, a soft beeping somewhere in the distance. He remembered her bitterly hurling something into the waste. He had thought that he'd dreamt it all, but maybe he hadn't.

'This is all your fault,' she hissed, lifting her head and settling it against the wall behind her.

Leon flinched. She was looking at him, her emerald eyes scorching a hole through his chest.

'I shouldn't be here. I should have left...' she continued feverishly, 'But I can't. Do you know how long I've been preparing for this mission? For almost a year. And in a few hours you've ruined it. From tonight alone I would have earned enough money to get away and just...God! I don't know what I would have done! But I wouldn't be sitting here like this at least. What do you think this is anyway? You're not in your world anymore, you're in mine and you won't last long in it as you are. You should have just cut your losses. _You _were the reckless and stupid one, not me.'

Ada wiped the heel of her hands against her hair, smoothing it back in slick, black waves. Then she twisted to the side and looked at the rookie cop, 'That PDA is also a tracking device you know; my employers like to keep me on a tight leash,' she laughed darkly, 'I don't blame them after the stunts I've pulled over the years. But if my colleague finds you he'll kill you without a second thought. If he finds us together he certainly won't hesitate to eliminate us both for what we're doing. "Removing obstacles" is what people like us call it. It's not for pleasure, it's just a procedure. I should have... I should have followed procedure...'

Leon could barely restrain himself. He leant his shoulder against the wall and allowed his head to tip on his shoulder, 'I'm sorry Ada...'

But she didn't hear him of course, she just kept going. Her pace was furious as if she was afraid she'd fall apart if she stopped for breath or that the young man would wake up and actually hear her.

'What is it in me that you find worth saving anyway? Everything is falling apart, yet you still won't leave me. I find that fascinating. I suppose that it's ironic. I had to work so hard to con a thousand people to believe in me over the years but with you...I didn't even have to try. All I had to do was show up and that was all it took for you to....for you to want to help me.'

She pushed her body away from the wall and cried out a little in pain. She crawled over to the young officer's sleepy form and placed her hand by the side of his face, her face lowering to his. Faltering for a moment, Ada pressed her lips against his cheek, the red bow mark of her lips disappearing against the mosaic of blood that already decorated the young cop's face.

He stirred but didn't open his eyes as Ada purred into his ear, 'This is not a fantasy. Heroes don't belong in this city tonight; they won't survive. But I'm going to leave this place having done at least one thing right. I'm not going to let you die down here Leon. My life is not more precious than yours, not by a long shot. Don't you dare bleed for me again, do you hear me? Don't even think about it.'

Leon's throat felt dry, so he couldn't have uttered another word even if he had been able to form a single coherent thought. All this time he had thought that she'd stayed with him because she felt sorry for a guy out of his depth, maybe a little guilty for leaving him, maybe hoping to use him some more. But he'd hurt her, shaken her up by leaping in front of a bullet.

She hadn't lied to him on that walkway in the lab. She really had wanted to help him. She had cared about him enough to disobey her orders outright, to throw it all away even though there was a part of her screaming that she should continue to follow the rules she'd lived by for so long. She'd told him so right in this spot thinking that he really couldn't hear her. Maybe she thought that he wouldn't believe her if she told him outright but needed to say the words nonetheless. And there was something...something in her phrasing and her tone. She knew. Somehow she'd known all along how it would end for them both that night.

Leon swore under his breath and took a step backwards. He needed the distance from her right now. He needed to think.

Back on the platform, Ada leaned away from the cop and sighed. The young officer began to stir, his eyes flying open as he wrestled himself into a standing position. He gingerly touched his shoulder wound and inspected the bandages that were already seeping with blood. He glanced up at Ada sheepishly and she looked away, for a second she seemed angry with him, disdainfully backing off and standing up straight.

'That's two I owe you,' she said calmly wiping her palms on the front of her dress.

The officer, a little startled at her tone simply shrugged, 'Don't mention it,' he said distantly.

The two watched each other for a full ten seconds, or rather Leon's gaze met Ada's face intently whilst she stared blankly at his bleeding shoulder.

She took a deep breath as if waking up suddenly and her eyes rose to meet his face, 'I just found out,' she declared blandly, 'Jon's dead.'

'What?' the young officer exclaimed, his blue eyes wide and alert again.

'Never mind,' she batted a lock of hair behind her ear and turned to grasp the railing of the ladder, 'Let's just get out of here. The sooner the better.'

Leon watched in silence as the young cop and his beautiful and broken companion scaled the ladder to greater heights and onwards to their fates.

He hastily turned to his father having almost forgotten the man's presence, 'Is this a memory? Did this actually happen or am I making it all up?'

'The last memory you had... the one at our home...that wasn't a lie,' Nathan crossed the moat of dirty water towards him, 'How I really died...I assume you've looked into it and found that your lost memory was the total truth. Both of these events are just things that, for one reason or another, you wanted to lock away.'

'Why would I want to forget Ada saying those things?' Leon asked breathlessly.

'Because it makes it easier to let her walk away I guess.'

'I don't let her walk away Dad,' he replied insistently, 'She chooses to and I can't stop her.'

'When was the last time you really tried?'

Leon almost growled in frustration, 'There is no one on this planet that can stop her.'

'Christ! Leon, if you believe that then you've lost the game before it's even begun. I thought you were more open-minded than that.'

'Where my work is concerned I am,' Leon argued, pointing to the vacant platform at the foot of the ladder, 'But with this....I can't be.'

Nathan stopped just inches in front of his son, an impatient frown carved into his face, 'Tell me something. Honestly. No joking around. Are you in-love with her?'

'What? ...I hardly...' Leon shook his head, 'I just don't know. Six years and I'm none the wiser. You want me to answer the question in less than a week? Are you serious? There is no one else in my life that I can compare her to. Friends, family, lovers, colleagues, enemies. She stands apart from every single one of them. Besides, if I can't trust her then what does it matter?'

His father grasped hold of Leon's shoulder and gave it a sharp squeeze. He waited until his son was looking him right in the eye, blue meeting grey. With a tone that Leon remembered from many a childhood lecture, Nathan replied, 'It matters because if you lose her in here,' he tapped Leon on the forehead with his index finger, 'then you lose her in the real world too.'

_I don't want to lose her._

The thought ambushed him and he flinched as if he'd been bitten by something sharp and cunning. He hated being unprepared, but he was more anxious than annoyed. For so long his thoughts had been eclipsed by Ada's deception and he hadn't caught sight of his own dishonesty. Ada wasn't just a part of him that he couldn't let go, she was a part of him that he didn't _want_ to let go. The idea of a world without her in it in some way, whether she was a memory, an adversary or a friend, appalled him.

His father stared on in sympathy and Leon parted his lips to ask exactly why he couldn't bring himself to let go, why the thought of Ada giving a damn about him made him feel both exhilarated and terrified. The woman was like riding a rollercoaster without a safety belt. But before he could say a word his mind began to thud brutally against his skull. It had taken over from the beating of his heart. Leon pressed his palm to his forehead and staggered backwards again feeling phantom kick aimed brutally at his chest. His back thumped against a solid surface and just like that the pain was knocked out of him.

He opened his eyes and found himself bathed in light, enclosed on all sides by tasteful wallpaper, velvet cushioned seats and newly replaced carpets with that fresh, chemical smell of 'clean'. He was still in his jogging outfit, but with one crucial difference. He was freshly showered and laundered now.

_Okay, this is one hell of an improvement. But where am I?_

There was no one around to answer his question because apart from him the place was as vacant as the deck of the Mary Celeste. Nathan wasn't around. Leon was on his own this time. He straightened his shoulders and groaned, his neck aching and his vision still a little fuzzy. His body felt stiff and his left arm was so sore that his lips twitched every time he moved it. He was in a hallway that he didn't recognise but the signs on the walls were in a mix of English, Russian, French, Spanish and a complex swirling script he didn't recognise. The sign on the door right in front of him read: 'Gymnasium and Sauna. Agents Only' and the CIA insignia was inscribed underneath it.

He was in a CIA sanctioned gym, probably on the site of one of their head quarters. He rarely ever used the one near Langley. He preferred to work out on his own if he could. Posing and competing against the other agents never held much appeal for him. Their surprisingly bitchy locker room banter drove him crazy. If there was anyone he wanted to compete against it was himself alone. Leon approached each door in turn, twisting the doorknobs and rapping his knuckles against the frame. The door to the gym was unlocked. The rest were bolted shut.

'Okay,' Leon muttered to no one in particular, 'I'll bite.'

He gently pushed the door open and stepped inside. Another foyer stretched out in front of him. The walls were a pale green and the floor was freshly buffed and gleaming. A wide but unmanned desk took pride of place in the centre of the room and behind it were three doors consecutively labelled 'Sauna', 'Gym' and 'Locker Room'. There was no-one else here either. To either side of the room were a series of windows that showcased the deep velvety blue of the night like silver frames around an oil painting. The stars were conspicuously absent but lights from cars that drove by outside slid through every now and then in fluorescent waves. Leon knew that he was here for a reason but for now he was lost.

_If you're lost just keep going. Investigate and explore. If those last few dreams are anything to go by this'll be interesting at least._

A rapid succession of thumps filled the room; relentless pounding of something hard to something very soft. This was followed by a chain of pants and groans and then flesh slamming against an unmovable opponent. The noises grew louder and sent a tremor through him. Whoever this person was they weren't shy about expressing pent-up aggression. Leon walked towards the door of the gym and quietly opened it.

The exact size of the gym was hard to make out because only half of the lights were on. He got the impression that the room rolled onwards into the darkness beyond but he spared it only a tiny thought. For some reason it didn't seem to matter. The nearest walls and floors were heavily padded with red and blue crash mats and a few benches barricaded the right side of the room. A single flood light encircled a large punching bag in the very centre, as if the universe was watching this one point with all its energy and focus.

The noises continued as a single figure threw her fists at the centre of the bulky red bag, the sack bucking with each impact and the chains that suspended it from the ceiling crashed together. The woman forced her gasps into a strict cadence by tightening her abdomen inwards and controlling her breathing. Her tight, red tank-top and black leggings glistened under the sparkle of the lights. Her black hair was brushed from her face by a thin, black Alice-band and her cheeks were the dusky pink of a winter sunset.

_Ada._

Leon paused beside the door, his hand still latched onto the handle. He felt breathless just watching her move. His eyes could barely keep up as he admired her technique, but he often found himself drawn to the soft curve of her hips or her legs sweeping up to place a pin-point kick dead centre on her target. She looked incredible. He wished he could stop being so surprised by that, maybe then he'd be able to think clearly when she was around. He felt charged watching her. It was always electric between the two of them, buzzing, fizzing, sparking and occasionally igniting and blowing apart everything else around them.

With a final yell torn straight from the depths of her gut, she punched the bag so hard that it wobbled and clanged raucously against its supports. Ada stepped away smoothly as it sprang back and almost collided with her body. She glared at the red bag, her sculpted black eyebrows curling downwards into a devilish frown.

_I really hope she's not thinking about me._

Ada flexed her fingers and cringed, squeezing her lips together till red flowed from them and they glowed white. She ripped off her black glove and cradled her right hand with her left. Leon could make out angry grey bruising in a uniformed row along her knuckles. He sighed and tilted his head, resting it against the door. How long had she been doing this to get wounds like that? She closed her eyes and concentrated on recapturing a sense of stillness and emptiness, breathing in through her nose and out through her parted lips.

'Is there something I can do for you Agent Kennedy or are you just visiting?' she suddenly called out across the room towards him, her eyes still closed.

_So it's 'Agent Kennedy' now huh?_

Leon walked towards her, letting the door slide shut silently behind him. As he stepped onto the mat he could make out the dark watermarks of sweat that decorated the front of her vest in a sharp V-shape; yet another sign that she'd been here for a while. Her hair was shoulder-length again, just like in his other dreams and there was a faint scar on her forehead. The skin of her upper left arm was discoloured and covered in half-healed second-degree burns. Leon came to a stop just a metre in front of her. He could smell the woody scent of perspiration and cinnamon that radiated from her skin.

Her eyes slowly flickered open, 'It's late. You shouldn't be here,' she rubbed the corner of her mouth with her fingertips, 'I thought you didn't like to workout in front of an audience.'

With that Ada turned away and sauntered to the wooden workout bench. She grabbed a fluffy, white towel and began to blot it against her neck. Leon watched her wearily and made his calculations. Since Ada had several nearly-healed wounds in the same places as she had during his previous dream of that Italian hospital and its oh-so-friendly medical staff, he guessed that this particular dream must be after that event in whatever timeline his mind was skipping along like a pebble skimmed across the water.

'Well?' Ada asked, her pale-green gaze almost scathing, 'Why are you here?'

She was angry with him, that much was obvious. It had been a while since their mission, at least where she was concerned, but she was still pissed at him.

'I'm not sure to be honest,' he replied diplomatically, 'I sort of brought myself here.'

_Well technically it's the truth. At least according to Dad._

'Fine. Enjoy,' she threw the towel onto the bench, 'Don't let me get in your way.'

'Okay,' he amended smoothly, 'I've come to see you.'

'Why? I haven't seen you since we returned from Italy. You've given me the cold shoulder ever since. What's changed?'

'I wish I could tell you, really I do,' he gave a short laugh at the ridiculousness of his situation, 'But I can't put my finger on it.'

She cocked her eyebrow at him before spinning on her heel and walking towards the door, 'I'll be waiting with baited breath for your answer. But I have to go now.'

Leon exhaled noisily, 'Can I ask you something?'

She carried on walking; not a single footfall out of rhythm.

'It's important,' he tried again, louder and taut with need and desperation, 'Ada, please.'

Her head tilted back and she sighed, before glancing at him over her shoulder. The bridge of her nose was wrinkled in irritation and her left foot tapped restlessly against the edge of the mat. She wasn't exactly expressing the level of interest that he'd been aiming for, but he took what he could get.

'I've wanted to ask you something for a while now, but it was never the right time or the right place. Why didn't you tell me that you were still alive?' he asked her steadily, 'Why hide something like that?'

She turned her body around to face him head-on and replied simply, 'It was for your own good.'

'Are you so sure about that? Was it good for me to find out about it all those years ago when a surveillance file containing your picture landed on my desk?' he interrogated her with a level tone as he recalled the event that had almost prematurely ended his career as an agent, 'It was that mission just outside Moscow a few years ago. Remember? The CIA had sent a group of agents to Russia immediately after getting a valuable gold nugget of information from an FSB defector. It was supposed to be a big opportunity for us; we'd get in before anyone else even knew this intel existed. I went in with a group of agents to get a hold of some valuable specifications but when we got there the hard drive had been wiped clean and the data was gone. I was new to the team back then and when they asked me if I knew what the hell had happened I said "no". Then they got _your_ image from one of the surveillance satellites stationed in range of the facility.'

Ada rested a hand on her hip as she watched him patiently, showing all the interest of a bored guest listening to a rambling anecdote at a cocktail party.

'You'd taken the information and wiped the computer. From the report I gave them about Raccoon City they _knew_ that I'd met you. They actually thought that I'd kept your resurrection a secret and told you where to get that information. If it wasn't for a few of my superiors supporting me then I'd have been put under investigation and lost the chance to become fully field rated,' Leon chest swelled with air as he fought to control the volume of his voice, 'I'd told them that it was impossible for you to have been there and that you were dead. When the truth came out I was utterly humiliated.'

'Humiliated?' her laugh was deliberately sour as she advanced on him threateningly, 'Did your image mean so much to you that the idea of me surviving was just an embarrassment?'

'I didn't mean it like that. Don't turn this on me,' he retorted huskily, 'You know that I was glad that you were okay. I mean that. I'm not blaming you for what happened. But you can't give me attitude for not trusting you when stuff like this keeps happening between us. We're not communicating Ada. Either one of us just isn't listening to the other or maybe we're both talking at the same time and not listening to each other at all. I just don't know where we stand with one another.'

Ada rolled her eyes up to the ceiling imploringly, 'It wasn't my intention to upset you and, despite your accusations, I don't ever want to see you hurt. But I can't work with you like this Leon. If you don't trust me then everything else counts for nothing.'

She turned around and began to walk towards the door. He could feel that electric connection between the two of them dissipating, not so much because of the physical distance but because of the emotional one.

'Don't go. Please, just stay for a minute.'

She stared back at him, 'I'm not at your beck and call. And I'm surprised you're interested in keeping me here. You've already requested a transfer from our unit so that we won't compromise each other anymore.'

_I did what?_

He was about to ask her to repeat that when suddenly his angry tirade against her in the hospital launched itself like a battle-cruiser through his consciousness.

"_Don't do me any favours. I don't need you to watch out for me Ada. I don't want you to watch out for me anymore. I don't care who you work for or what you do. It's none of my business. I just don't want to be involved. Leave me out of it."_

No wonder she was so angry with him. In Raccoon City she'd leapt straight into keeping him safe; she'd been bare and unprepared for a duty that horrified her as much as it enticed her. And he'd thrown it back in her face as though her sacrifices meant nothing to him. Though he still resented her insistence on keeping him in the dark during situations that affected them both, he couldn't just ignore everything she'd done for him in the past. It was unfair and he felt like scum for letting his anger rule his attitude towards her. He hadn't let that happen in the past, but he'd slipped up and stopped thinking. If he was ever going to make headway with Ada Wong then he needed to be smarter than that.

'Ada wait!' he yelled at her retreating back.

She didn't stop but he didn't give up. She wasn't the only stubborn creature in the room.

'Spar with me,' he suggested, resting his arm on the red punching bag.

Ada turned around, 'I beg your pardon?'

'You and me. Right here, right now. Best of three,' Leon smiled with all the gall he could muster, 'Unless you're scared. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's okay to be in awe of the master.'

Then Ada did something that made his toes curl. She laughed. It wasn't a full belly laugh but she closed her eyes for a second and her smile cast her cheekbones into high-relief.

'I'm only in awe of your ego...or your sense of humour,' she replied as she paced towards him, bearing down on him like a panther, her black clad legs brushing against each other when she moved.

'Is that a yes?' he asked, his voice a little shakier than he'd have liked, but at least he could form a coherent response.

'All right,' she shrugged, tossing her gloves to the floor, 'What do I get when I win?'

'"When"?' he chuckled, 'Your ego eclipses mine any day of the week.'

Leon began to back away from the bag towards the centre of the room but still within the confines of the overhead lights. She followed him and he grinned, a distinct pleasure at having her chase _him_ for a change. He was starting to figure out why she liked having the lead so much. But she was born to be a predator. Maybe he wasn't leading her; maybe she was backing him into a corner.

'Okay Ada,' he continued, 'If you win then I'll...come back to the unit and stop asking you all these damn questions. If I win then I'll come back to the unit...but I'll ask you whatever the hell I want and you have to answer honestly.'

'How can I trust that you won't ask anything...inappropriate?'

'Inappropriate? You think I'd do something like that?' he asked, stopping the middle of the room.

'No. I guess not,' she stopped just inches from his chest, smiling up at him, 'How about something a little different. If you get me on that mat,' she flicked her eyes towards the floor, 'Then I'll answer one question.'

'Fine. That'll do. And if you get me down?'

She stepped closer, tilting her head upwards and emphasising the height difference between them, 'I'll improvise.'

Her lips hadn't even finished curling themselves around the word 'improvise' when she wrapped her ankle around his calve and pushed hard on his chest with her palms. Leon reacted quickly, stumbling backwards but staying upright.

'No weapons right?' he asked with a roguish grin, patting her down with his eyes.

'Do you want to search me Agent Kennedy?'

He had a feeling that there'd be hell to pay if he tried. The hard, narrow contour of her eyes as she glared at him guaranteed at least minor injury.

'I don't think that's necessary,' he replied.

She halted in front of him and flicked her tongue against her bottom lip, her mouth parting gently, 'You've certainly changed your tune. You weren't so accommodating just a few weeks ago.'

Leon edged closer to her, remembering how much shorter she was without high heels. He noticed that those few inches made her tilt backwards a little to look him in the eye, how she took advantage of that and stared at him through a curtain of soft, black hair, and how appealing he found the gentle slope of her profile from her forehead to her lips to her chin.

'Everyone's entitled to a bad day. I've been saving all of mine up for the past six years,' he smiled warmly, 'I didn't mean to-'

Ada didn't let him finish his sentence before she flew a fist in his direction and sucked the air from him again. Leon grabbed her wrist and threw her around. She gasped and he caught a sharp look of surprise and irritation before she fluently snatched her hand from his hold and backed off.

'Didn't mean to what?' she enquired innocently, clenching her fists in front of her body and bearing her bruised knuckles, 'Show me up to your superiors? Compromise half a decade of my work?'

'I admitted that I was mistaken. I explained why I said what I did,' he dropped his fists, more eager to brawl with her verbally than physically.

'Your apology is worthless Leon,' she told him, sugary and condescending.

'Then what do you want?'

'Oh for God's sake. You know what I want. I want your help!' she exclaimed, striking his abdomen with her fist.

Leon took the hit, the sharp edge to her hands knocking his last meal up into his throat. But to his credit he didn't make a sound. She seemed impressed with that, wide eyed and excited.

Breathing heavily she smirked at him with a hard line of defiance along her lips, 'You've gotten better since we last did this.'

He circled away from her, 'You sound impressed.'

'I'm not,' she dashed towards him and aimed a perfect kick to his mid section.

He stepped back just far enough to lessen the force of the blow, springing forwards quickly before her feet had even hit the ground. He made a half-hearted play for her arm but she dodged him and tried to kick him once again. This time he was ready. Grabbing her ankle he flipped her leg to the side sending her crashing backwards onto the mat.

To her credit she barely made a sound but the look she gave him spoke volumes. Part fury, part disbelief and a dash of amusement for good measure. Her tank-top had ridden up slightly and he caught a glimpse of her smooth, white stomach, the gentle dip of her belly button and the faded, eight year old scar that smiled up at him. For an idle moment he wondered what it would be like to kiss her there. Adrenaline bubbled like liquid fire all the way to his stomach and then further beyond making him a little dizzy and very, very thirsty.

_Come on, concentrate. You've got the chance to ask her what you've always wanted to ask her. Sure this isn't the real Ada, but it looks like her and sounds like her. It's the best you're ever going to get._

'I'd forgotten how lucky you are Handsome,' she purred, resting her arms on her chest as he stood over her.

Leon extended his hand to help her up, 'It's not luck.'

'I believe you have something to ask me,' she said as she declined his help and rose to her feet.

Rolling his tongue on the inside of his cheek, Leon pulled his empty hand back and looked her in the eye, 'Okay, Ada. Riddle me this: why are you working with the CIA now? Why betray Wesker and his people?'

Ada rolled back her shoulders and relaxed, 'Why look a gift horse in the mouth? I thought that you'd approve of me redeeming myself. Isn't that the sort of thing men like you believe in?'

_Men like me? What does she mean by that?_

He chose to ignore her comment since it carried the hot, rising tide of yet another impending argument.

'And are you...redeeming yourself?' he asked casually, pushing his luck to breaking point.

The smile on her lips vanished, 'I don't know what redemption is. I'm not sure that I even believe in it or if it's possible for me no matter what I do or who I work with. I want what's best for me. It's as simple as that.'

'Is it ever that simple with you Ada?'

'Your question is up Agent Kennedy,' she took up a fighting stance, her leg braced behind her, 'Don't get greedy.'

Leon joined her in the centre of the room and they began to battle again. He took advantage of every minute as he dodged her attacks and watched the way she moved. She liked playing with him. She was like a cat with a toy mouse. He even saw her lick her lips once. It didn't take long for him to realise that she wasn't playing to win. She was just _playing_ with him, seizing hold of the opportunity to dance with an equal in relative safety and to spend a moment not watching her back. She was soaking in the experience and now so was he. He was enjoying himself, _truly_ enjoying himself for the first time in far too long. He was blocking punches from the most dangerous woman he knew, but still it'd take three men and a crowbar to wrench the inane grin from his face.

Ada caught hold of him from the front and kneed him in the stomach hard enough to throw off his centre of balance. She broke away and threw him to the floor, letting his body weight do the rest.

Leon swallowed hard as he panted heavily and squinted up at her, 'So...' he wheezed as casually as he could, 'What are you going to do with me?'

She bit her lip, 'Don't sound so worried Leon,' kneeling beside him slowly, she placed her hand on his chest, her nails digging into his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt, 'You know, come to think of it...I've never actually told you a lie before.'

He laughed in astonishment, the sound strained slightly under the light pressure of her hand on his chest, 'Really?'

She remained solemn, 'Think about it. In Raccoon City I told you that I was after a man called Ben, that I had a boyfriend named Jon and that I wasn't sure where he was. That was the truth. And in Spain I told you absolutely nothing. Every single word I've told you is the truth.'

Leon thought back to those times and concluded, begrudgingly, that she was right, 'That's not the point.'

'Oh?' the corner of her scarlet lips twitched.

'A lie of omission is still a lie. You were selective with the truth. It wasn't some kind of crazy accident. You deceived me deliberately to get what you wanted.'

'Perhaps,' Ada sighed, lifting her hand from him and depriving him of the jolts of warmth her touch sent through him, 'Deception, lies of omission, whatever you want to call them. They are the only thing that has kept us at arms length from each other; spinning on an axis, you on one side, me on another. Apart and moving but always connected. It's the only thing that's kept us alive. If I had contacted you all those years ago to tell you that I was alive then Wesker would have found out. He was too powerful and I was too weak back then. I was protecting you and you may not understand that but it's the truth. I can't make it any plainer than that. It's the reality I live with.'

She stood up and stepped away from him as if she needed the air, 'It's a little different from how you experience your world perhaps. But I thought....I'd _hoped_ that you'd understand.'

Leon turned his head against the mat to follow her retreat. Her wide eyes were angled to the ground but she was blinking rapidly, trying to make sense of something maybe or attempting to merely forget about it.

'Why didn't you say something like this before?' he asked as he sat up and climbed to his feet.

'Because it would make things worse,' she looked into his eyes, her confidence solid and unfaltering, 'You prefer to resent me. It makes things easier. Admit it. My kindness would torture you and as big a glutton for punishment as you are, you have a breaking point. We all do.'

Leon drew nearer to her, 'Don't say that. I've never resented you. Sure I've been angry and said things...but I don't hate having you in my life. Just because I don't like some of your decisions doesn't mean I wouldn't try to understand them if you just gave me the chance. I guess it's easier to assume the worst when you're not given any real details,' he lowered his gaze to the crash-mats and brushed his tongue along the roof of his mouth.

He took the time to catch his breath, his heart and his senses. Then he clucked his tongue against his teeth and lifted his chin, meeting her weary gaze without hesitation, 'I can't help you if you don't give me something to work with. And I _do_ want to help you.'

Ada nodded. She didn't smile but she wasn't looking so pensive anymore. It was progress.

_Baby steps. That's what it takes. Baby steps._

'Do you think you could catch me this time?' she challenged him.

'Oh, I can stop you.'

'Since when have you _ever_ been able to stop me?'

Leon gaped at her, 'I stopped you in your tracks in Spain. Or do you prefer not to remember that?'

'That time hardly counts. I was going easy on you then.'

He fell naturally back into their game as he joined her and they continued to circle one another on the mat, taunting and teasing, sharpened and carved and shaped like a blade's edge but without the bitter aftertaste of defensiveness and hostility. For now at least they had something sweeter. It was getting harder to breathe. His injuries, though out of his conscious thoughts, were dragging him back like heavy chains across his ankles.

Ada reached out to trap him again but he was prepared. Her hand sliced past his face grazing his nose and he gripped her wrist, pulling her towards him. She elbowed him in the ribs almost hard enough to force him to let go. But he only loosened enough to let her spin around in his arms to face him. Stomping on his instep, Ada bucked her body against his, her left leg locking around his waist and her chest against his. She grunted and laughed a little under her breath as he braced his arms around her lower back.

He was man enough to admit one thing. It had been a while. A long while. A _really_ long while and it was feeling longer and longer the more time she spent rubbing her thigh against his hip. Leon groaned as his vision began to duck and weave. His concentration became like sand running between his fingers. The heat of her body rushed into him and his tongue and cheeks felt thick and parched. Against his fingers he could feel the dewdrops of sweat rolling down her spine and the thundering of her heart through the back of her ribs. She twisted against him and the friction made him want to dive for her perfect, pale throat and sink his teeth into her flesh.

Green collided with blue as she looked into his eyes and her lips curled triumphantly. Suddenly, she kicked against the floor with her right leg and knocked him off balance. Leon bit his tongue as Ada sent them both hurtling through the air and back towards the floor.

---

Leon cried out as the back of his skull bounced against the hard, wood floor. Tess yelped in alarm and dove away from her master who had just toppled backwards in his chair after having made some loud, bizarre groaning noises for the past twenty minutes. Extracting his bruised body from the inverted leather chair, Leon rubbed the back of his head and moaned.

_My dreams should come with some kind of warning label._

He glanced around his living room to find his apartment exactly as he'd left it. It was cold; a chilled breeze sailed in through the open window. He rose and stumbled towards it, closing it firmly and sealing in the remaining shred of warmth. He sighed and stretched, a yawn rippling through him. It was then that he saw the remainder of his sneakers torn to shreds and distributed like confetti over the living room floor.

'Tess. Bad dog!' he turned to his naughty Labrador to find her gazing back at him happily as if proud of her redecoration efforts, 'You have chew toys already!' he explained patiently, 'Tell you what, tomorrow I'll but you an extra large pair of tennis shoes that you can trash to your heart's content. You can just go nuts with those and stay away from my shoes. How does that sound?'

Tess' ears perked up at his tone. She knew it meant a treat of some kind and she barked amiably.

Leon sighed and shot her a tired smile. He was still shaken from his dream and, to be honest, more than a little aroused. So much for falling asleep again tonight. But he'd give up almost anything to be able to continue that dream. There was something so unjust and cruel about it ending there.

The phone on the table in the corner began to ring. Leon jogged over and grabbed the receiver, knowing that at this time of night it could only be one of a handful of people.

'Agent Kennedy?' the voice at the other end sounded mechanical and interbred with gusts of static. He couldn't even tell if they were male or female.

'That's right,' he replied calmly and clearly, 'Who is this?'

'That's not important. I don't have much time but I'm calling on behalf of a mutual friend you contacted recently for information. They can't help you, but I can. If you're willing to pay for it, meet me at Union Station.'

'When?' he asked fumbling across the leaves of paper on his desk for a pen. He wasn't concerned with how much he'd have to part with just yet. He knew that setting up a meeting was the hardest part of gathering sensitive information. He could haggle in person.

The line at the other end fell silent for several seconds and Leon half expected the dial tone to sound. But before it did he heard one final word from his caller.

'Tonight.'

---

_I hope you liked this chapter- I was aiming for it to be a turning point for Leon in this story with regards to his relationship with Ada._

_**Author's notes:**_

_Some of you have been asking specific questions and making comments. Until now I haven't had the time to answer them, even though really I wanted to. So now I will:_

_**Vogue:**__ So I made you pee yourself in anticipation? Mwah ha ha ha haaa!!!_

_**Alaska Kennedy: **__I hope you have a very happy birthday Alaska!_

_**Spinx: **__In one of the last reviews you gave me you said that you were looking forward to the torture chapter :-) so I was thinking about you as I posted it. I don't watch Lost but I did watch Alias, which has always been my inspiration for torture scenes (but I promise neither Leon or Ada will end up having their teeth pulled out by an Asian guy in glasses like some of Alias' characters did.) I have read '1984' and I did see in some ways that the water chamber was Ada's personal 'Room 101'. And I can't give many details about my next __**two**__ stories, though I can tell you that one of them will be a little bit of a tribute to the TV show 'Sliders'._

_**List of Romantics: **__I don't buy my cliff-hangers. I manufacture them by hand in my fortress of doom using glue, cardboard and sparkly glitter :D_

_**Keybladem: **__Thank you. I also enjoyed Perry's 'City of the Dead'. I read it at university as I was just getting into the world of Resident Evil and I found her portrayal of Leon and Ada to be very compelling. She's definitely been an inspiration to me there. As for this story- the end of Faith will bring a resolution to Ada's storyline and the personal and professional trials that Leon is going through. However, I am planning to, in the future, write a third and final instalment to this series where Leon and Ada's stories come together and we can find out whether they ever get to have that dream life together for real._

_**Crimson Butterfly89: **__Thanks for reading. And good luck with your story!_


	8. When in Doubt

**Faith**

_Author's note: Wow, I am delighted that the previous chapter proved so popular. Thanks for reading and leaving your lovely reviews! They kept me happy during my boring and highly annoying week at work. _

**Chapter 8**

**When in Doubt**

_I won't be made useless, won't be idle with despair, I will gather myself around my faith, light's the darkness most fear._

_--Jewel _

The hand against her cheek was so tender and smooth that she leaned into its touch, stretching longingly towards it like a bird as it soars towards the sunlight at dawn. Ada Wong stirred against the plump mattress for a moment as she began to relearn her own body, to recall how her limbs moved, remember what it felt like to stand and walk and run.

A soft, audible sigh drifted from between her parted lips. The glass tank, the freezing water, Wesker's threats. It almost felt as though it had happened to someone else. Air, so fresh that she doubted it had ever been tasted by another human being, filled her lungs as she inhaled. An influx of heat, like an exotic current, coursed through her muscles and massaged her aching head. She had yet to open her eyes, finding the strange display of lights and blurs behind her closed eyelids almost soothing. It was pleasing, something that had been torn straight from a catalogue of simple, human pleasures and it was hers now at last. She laughed huskily against her hands as she lay curled up into a ball and relaxed for the first time in several days.

'Ada,' a gentle, feminine voice urged her to open her eyes.

'No,' she mumbled back, still feeling weak from torture, her mind and body equal in their frailty. She nuzzled her nose into the pillow, 'Leave me alone. It's over. Didn't you ever learn that it's rude to disturb the dead?'

'It's not over Little One. Not if you don't want it to be,' the woman pressed her cool fingers against Ada's forehead.

Ada recoiled suddenly, her eyes snapping open, 'You,' she whispered almost accusingly.

Pleased at the recognition tossed her way, Ada's grandmother sat back against her tall, wicker chair, smiled and ran her palms over the silk of her sapphire blue gown. Her nails were short, as they had always been during her life, but were painted a deep shade of green and glittered in the cool light that poured in from the window.

Sitting up and shoving the blankets to her lap, Ada took in the room around her. She saw its blue walls, its tall windows, its elegant furniture and its warmth. Beneath her prone body was a firm double bed with a thick quilt and the scent of sweat and pollen. She was wearing a long, red nightgown with thin straps that looped over her shoulders. It was cotton, light and comfortable against her body. She moaned as she rolled to her side and slipped her legs off the side of the bed. She braced her hands against the wall as she pulled herself to her feet. It was all so painfully familiar. She had dreamed of this place days ago. She had lived in it. She had been with _him _here; in this very bed, curled against the contours of this mattress. It still smelt of him, or rather of _them._

She glanced up suddenly as a possibility dawned within her mind, 'Leon...'

Without looking back at her grandmother, Ada ran towards the door. Before doubt and personal reproach set in she was already downstairs, throwing open the doors to the kitchen and the living room.

They were bright, spotless and completely empty. She was alone here.

Her cheeks were tinted pink as she blushed, her head hanging low as she collapsed onto the couch in the living room. Ada curled her long legs underneath her body as disappointment began to bleed her dry of hope. A large, spongy object pressed into her back as she reclined against the green throw cushions and she squirmed against it. She frowned and reached behind her to grab hold of the offending article. What she found tempted a despondent smile from the depths of her loneliness. It was a white teddy bear with a blue ribbon around its neck. It smelt of honey and sugar and sunshine.

_What did you expect Ada? That they'd be here? And then what? The three of you could play house and make pancakes for all eternity?_

Ada smirked before exhaling and resting her head against the back of the couch.

'Why am I here alone?' she asked faintly, 'What's happened to me now?'

Her grandmother's footsteps were purposeful but as soundless as the rise of the sun as she entered the living room and pulled up a seat opposite her.

'You're still alive Ada. Just,' she told her firmly, 'But you won't be for much longer if things continue like this.'

'Like what?' Ada asked, gently placing the teddy bear to one side.

'I'm referring to your game with Wesker; the one that you are soundly losing.'

Scowling up at her, Ada tensed and dug her fingers into her lap, 'Losing? And what would you know about that?' she paused momentarily, her lips parting theatrically, lush and red though her eyes were tired and sallow. The venom didn't seep to the surface of her skin, but it tainted her voice with the tang of molten silver, 'Of course, I remember now. Your work, your projects, your silly little theories at the university. Even your only daughter. All failures.'

It was a base attempt at an insult; the kind of dirt-cheap bitchiness that she excelled at when moved to defend herself. Not that it would make much difference to this old woman.

_She knows that I'm trying too hard to make her go. She's never going to leave now._

Her grandmother's poker face was eerie, far paler and calmer than Ada's. Her pupils were black marble. The light they reflected could have been confused with emotion, perhaps sadness; as a stone sculpture or a granite headstone could bring a grown man or woman to tears, they were nothing but a reflection of the soul of the observer. And when Ada looked into this woman's eyes she saw loss.

'Why didn't you fight harder this time?' the woman demanded, the velvety edge to her voice irrelevant as far as Ada was concerned, especially when cast against the accusation itself.

'A girl doesn't have many options when she's chained up,' she replied huskily, unconsciously wringing her wrists with her fingers.

'Of course you have options, foolish girl! You have the option to agree to his terms and be released,' the older woman told her, her tone level and superior.

Her granddaughter did not take that attitude well.

'Agree to his terms?' she replied scathingly, 'And hand over the Las Plagas sample? Sell out The Organisation and wait another year, two years or three years or whatever until Wesker disposes of me once and for all? Are you insane?'

'Hardly,' her grandmother raised one impeccably drawn, black eyebrow, 'I'm being logical. Surrendering to Wesker for the moment will buy you time and give you another chance to escape. If you are patient you can still achieve your aims.'

'And what would you know about that? If I give in then Wesker is likely to just kill me anyway. But if I resist then the Plagas sample is safe from him. I die either way, but the latter has a little more dignity to it.'

'There is no dignity in sticking to your stubborn pride above all else,' the woman fumed bitterly and looked away, taking a moment to gather her patience, 'Don't confuse one for the other. You are too much like your mother. And much too much like me.'

'Then you should understand,' Ada replied calmly, leaning forward to meet the older woman's eye, 'You should know why I'm doing this.'

'I do know Little One. I know it well. I know why you're doing this and I know what the outcome will be. You'll waste your life and obliterate your own future....and for what? Pride? Fear?' she extended her slim, pale hands and took Ada by the wrists, 'Why do you think your mother only sang in front of people too drunk to really listen to her? Why do you think I gave up on my only child? You used to have unshakable faith in your future.'

'That was before I began to question who I was and what I wanted.'

Escape used to be enough for her but since Spain she had wondered if being cleansed of the lingering stench of Umbrella would be any better than her life now. Would it be simply swapping one kind of emptiness for another? Same shit, worse pay?

'Whatever you believe in now, it is no reason to give up.'

'And it's no reason to lie back and play dead either. Wesker doesn't kiss nice,' Ada pulled her arms away and folded them over her lap, the trunk of her body arching forwards as though she were about to heave, 'I will not give in to his demands,' she muttered, staring up unblinkingly into the woman's eyes, 'How dare you ask me to.'

'You behave as though you have no power anymore Ada,' the woman gazed at her imploringly, her impossibly smooth palms turned up to the sky. She seemed let down by her granddaughter, 'You are powerful in so many ways. Why do you think Wesker is exerting so much effort to break you? He is afraid of you because he knows that part of you has changed. He sees in you what he once had and it fascinates the man inside the monster.'

'And then what? I give in, say 'uncle' and then live happily ever after?'

'No,' she barked back at her, intolerant of her pessimism, 'You work and you struggle to escape from what _you_ have gotten yourself into. You cannot give up until every avenue is blocked and every chance is worn to nothing.'

To be broken down and then told that she had given up too soon enraged her. Ada pushed away from the couch and stood up, her arms stiff against her sides as resentment fused her body rigid, 'Get out of here. Leave for your own good before you really begin to piss me off!'

Her grandmother leaned back indulgently and crossed her legs, her dress rippling like the surface of the ocean, 'No,' she inclined her head to the side and stared at Ada with a small grin on her lips, 'You should leave, not me. You get out of here. Live.'

'I can't...' Ada pressed her hands to her forehead, the heels of her palms digging against her temples. She was weak and lightheaded. She felt like a foreign element in this setting; she didn't belong her and something was fighting her off as if she were a virus, 'Wesker won't hesitate to go after Leon if I'm alive. No matter what I do he is still a bargaining chip and a liability. If I can't protect him...'

Then her grandmother stood up and folded her long, thin fingers around Ada's hands pulling them from her face, 'Maybe you should let him protect you for a change.'

'I don't want his help. I don't need it,' Ada growled and stared at the ground, 'I just want this to be over right now, on my terms! Why is it so bad to want this to end?'

She combed a steady hand through Ada's hair, 'It isn't bad. But it isn't right for you either. If you really wanted it to end, why are you here? Why did you rush down here looking for them the moment you woke up?'

Ada stared over the woman's shoulder and out towards the window. The glass reflected the room like a mirror and captured their blurred figures standing face to face. It was as if nothing else existed outside of this house. She shook her head suddenly, 'I didn't want it to be this way, but I'm so tired _lǎo lǎo_.'

She smiled fondly, '_Lǎo lǎo_? You haven't called me that in the longest time.'

Drawing back slightly, Ada let her hands fall by her sides, 'Force of an old habit. Are you guilty? Is that it? Are you sorry that you didn't save me from everything else when you were still alive? You can rest easy and go back to wherever you came from, safe with the knowledge that your good deed is done. I'm not afraid to die.'

'Yes, I know,' the woman nodded in almost friendly agreement, 'You're just afraid to live.'

Startled for a moment, Ada gazed back at her intently. All of a sudden she didn't know what to do with her hands. She was freezing again, her body erupting in tiny goose-bumps so sharp and strong that they almost burst through her thin skin like scales. Her arms started to tremble a little so she folded them across her chest and inhaled slowly to leach some heat from the air.

_This can't be happening again._

Then, laughing with practiced and affected dispassion, Ada buried her shock beneath her contempt and glanced away, 'You act like I still have a choice.'

The older woman approached her granddaughter, 'You've already decided. Look.'

Ada flinched and looked down at her hands, uncurling her fingers slowly. They looked like ice, brittle and stiff. And blue. Her fingers were pale blue, her veins thin and withered against protruding bone. She cried out, clutching them to her body as the crystalline sensation spread along her arms and chest, to her heart and lungs. She had uprooted herself somehow and not it was minutes before the force of this final gale toppled her for good.

Her grandmother took her by the shoulders, a grip that alone held Ada together for a minute longer, even as she tried to turn away, 'Look at me now. You are all I have ever had, the only thing in the world of the living that proves that I ever once existed there too. No grandchild of mine is going to die now and in this way! You're not the only one who can be a stubborn bitch.'

Ada had never seen her grandmother truly demand anything from her in such a way. Their short time together had been one of mutual tolerance and evasion, embarrassment and shame in the thin guise of love.

'Answer me,' the older woman demanded, 'During the worst times what is the best way to keep a secret?'

By now the woman's hands were the only things keeping her upright, so Ada found it hard to concentrate. The question stretched like a rubber band, echoing into bottomless depths.

'I don't know,' she pushed her palms against her grandmother's shoulders as her knees buckled. She closed her eyes as a migraine spit her skull like an earthquake, the fault-line growing wider and wider, choking down every word the woman told her.

'Yes you do.'

She shook her head side to side. It oscillated only a few centimetres but it felt like her skull was ricocheting from wall to wall. The rhythm of her breathing became choppy and uncoordinated and she swallowed whilst trying to exhale, the pressure strangling her. Her body froze over from the inside out, a cage of ice locking her away, fusing her lips and containing the scream that was swelling inside her ribs. The pressure grew, straining against the fabric of her skin till she shattered like a hollow diamond into countless, precious pieces.

'Is she awake?'

The confused jungle of voices came first. She was on the ground, prone, a solid block of ice melting over the floor; or at least that's how she felt.

_How long was I gone this time? Surely it's not healthy to keep coming back from the dead over and over and..._

'I don't care what the problem is Arthur,' the voice, a voice she knew, resumed sounding tight and threatening, 'Wake her up.'

Wesker was the first thing she saw when she awoke. Not surprisingly his presence was like a marble statue in the centre of the room, cold and strikingly sinister, drawing the eye like a darkly beautiful work of art and making other figures fade away. They had taken her out of the tank and lowered her to the floor. Two competent medics, one kneeling over her and another that she couldn't see, where busy covering her with thermal blankets and feeling for the subtle sobbing of her pulse.

Wesker made it a policy to hire the best medical care when dealing with his prisoners because torture is pointless if you can't keep your enemies alive for long enough to get what you needed from them, whether that was information or pure, sadistic pleasure. Ada tried to move her arms but she was still utterly weak. Her muscles felt wasted and hollow and her fingers twitched intermittently in perfect time with her erratic blinking.

'Ada,' Wesker stood over her, his hands shoved into the pockets of his long, black coat, 'Good of you join us. It's late and it's been a near-perfect evening with you to entertain us. There is one thing that could round it off for us all, including you. Tell me what I want to know and we can end this dance.'

_Tell him? Tell him. Of course. Tell him. That's it._

She stared up at him blankly, her lips quaking as she tried to speak.

'I didn't quite catch that,' he knelt down next to her, savouring the flavour of her defeat.

A connoisseur of ruin as he was, she wondered how she tasted to him now, if she scored high on his lists of conquests, if she had been worth the many hours he had spent in near-silent observation and frustration, if he appreciated the show she had given him.

Ada glared at Wesker, her wheezing breaths becoming louder and more laboured as she felt something powerful for him, something new. Hatred. She was in awe of it, so much so that she almost forgot how to speak. The term 'hate' is used too lightly as far as she believed. To resent another person was consuming and arduous. It was special. The idea of crippling his operation was now laughable and threadlike in its lack of complexity and rigour. She wanted to destroy everything he had and then to kill him.

'I...I betrayed you...' she breathed, a light sob rising like bile from the depths of her body.

'Yes. Thank you. I'm aware of that,' Wesker told her, his sharp cheekbones rising as he sneered, 'To whom? Where is my sample?'

'The...The Organisation. I gave it to...to The Organisation,' she whimpered.

Wesker smiled and she knew for sure, before she fell unconscious again, that he was satisfied. However, he was wholly unaware that she was feeling the exact same way, perhaps even more so, because she had remembered the one, honest thing that her grandmother had told her during her childhood.

_Sometimes the only way to keep a secret is to tell it._

_---_

_We won't be hearing from Ada again for another few chapters so I won't reveal what she has planned just yet..._

_**Diorelli: **__As for Leon's sex life, (good question btw) in my story he didn't even know that Ada was alive for quite a long while and he can barely bring himself to trust her very far. Besides, his colleague was just teasing him. So no, he hasn't been waiting for Ada. The man has needs and I am more than willing to provide for them...not literally of course (I should be so lucky!) However, you're definitely on the right track as far as how I've written Leon's past with regards to other women. It won't play a big part in this story but it does come up._

_**List of Romantics: **__Well Fortresses of Doom look nice in the brochures but they're hell to keep clean :3 And as for a massage...maybe I'll write that in later just for you._

_And no, I'm not a professional writer, though it be nice if I can get the chance. I don't have any plans to take it beyond fanfic right now, but who knows what will happen in the future! Though if Capcom need someone to novelise Resident Evil 4 for them I am very available. :-)_

_I am excited about putting up the next few chapters as they are favourites of mine. I liked writing them as I got the chance to place Leon and Ada in an environment that they aren't usually placed into together. And we also get to learn more about Leon's personal life and his childhood. That chapter will go up on __**Wednesday.**_

_Till then- take care!_


	9. Welcome Home

**Faith**

_Author's note: Okay, I'm personally excited about these next few chapters so I chose to upload this one a little early (not that anyone would mind I suppose). I enjoyed writing them, though it was hard to do so in parts. I truly hope that it was worth the wait and you guys enjoy them too._

_**Keybladem: **__Thank you for your offer but I already have a beta. Not that there's a law against having more than one though. I can't promise anything because I haven't started a new story just yet and I'm not sure when I will. But I'll remember that you offered. :-)_

**Chapter 8**

**Welcome Home**

_Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city._

_-- George F Burns_

His curiosity had taken him far, like an enthusiastic child leading him by the hand. From the deserted tenement at the end of his street that he'd explored as a kid, to the deep end of the pool in his neighbour's backyard, to the police academy, to Raccoon City, to Ada. And now to the feet of an ivory and gold elephant. Washington's Union Station was an imposingly classical piece of architecture, a mix of millennia old motifs and styles in a building that, by comparison, was brand new. Weather-worn statues of important figures balanced like acrobats on top of several thick columns at the top of the stairs outside of the main entrance. Inside, the central building held several levels and had a lofty ceiling that bowed like a stone tent, its rafters stretching like ribs inside the belly of an ivory giant. The floor was a pristine white that clashed with the dark streaks left by the feet of a thousand travellers who had boarded or disembark trains throughout the day. It was midnight now and the yellow lights either side of the busy meeting area sprayed a soft golden glow on the walls. Most of the shops and cafes were closed but the trains still ran, meandering through the city. It was unusually crowded though; a spectacle of people. Men in expensive but rumpled business suits slept on wooden benches and groups of backpackers huddled together in corners using their bags as pillows. Then there were the more unusual specimens, such as the old man in a tweed jacket and lime green socks, the woman in four inch, plastic high-heels, and the pair of twin Goths in matching phantom-pale make-up and chains perched side by side like ornamental dolls. A gold 'Welcome' sign shone above a series of luminous, red reams of data showing train departures and arrivals. The lines spluttered and changed, but over half of them were concluded with the word 'delayed'. In his car on the way up Leon had listened to the radio to keep himself at a distance from the persistent sense of dread that had shadowed him since he'd answered that phone call. According to the news update there had been a signal failure on one of the main lines that had delayed a large chunk of the rush hour trains. Lucky for him, he wasn't here to catch a ride.

Shoving his hands into the pockets of his brown, leather jacket, Leon inspected the cloud of commuters that had gathered around the announcement board listening intently to the loud but incoherent announcements over the hidden speakers till the faint drone of electronically battered carnival music resumed to remind them that it was almost the holidays. Business executives barking into cell phones, a few tired and grouchy looking families, bored tourists; the usual. But any of them (male, female, young or old) could be his contact and according to them, they had a mutual friend. Time would tell whether he could trust that assertion or not. He'd come armed of course. In fact he couldn't remember the last time he'd left his apartment without at least a small blade hidden in his boot. If his mother or sister knew that then they'd be horrified, which was why Leon left that detail out of his Christmas cards.

Leon stood in the centre of the main hall beside the remnants of a recent exhibit that had been housed at the station. It was a twenty foot tall white, plastic, hollow elephant with golden tusks and the name of a famous chocolate company etched across its stout belly. Its trunk spiralled into the air to point longingly at the face of a distant clock. There were other sculptures too; a horse suspended in mid-canter, a clown juggling invisible balls in the air and a roaring white tiger with gold stripes.

_Huh. The circus must be in town._

The white walls around him were draped in a fire-burst of coloured lights that scorched the walls red, blue and green. And he watched it until the colours lost all meaning and their contrasts were as invisible and blended as the soft murmurs of conversation beside him. Bright lights were like drops of water on parched lips to him. He figured he'd spent too much time in the dark as it is.

When he had been ten years old, his mother and stepdad Alan had taken him and his six year old sister to the annual fair by the water front. It had been a pretty big deal considering that he had pestered his mom for days and done extra chores on the off chance that he could stay up past ten on a school night and attend the festivities. There wasn't a word for how excited he'd been on the long drive up, but his glee had been propelled even higher by the sight of a Ferris Wheel so huge that its lights shone from three blocks away. The smell of animals and stale hotdog buns had galloped around the carnival on the back of the freezing night air. It had been the dead of winter with a sky so dark that he'd half believed that a creature had swallowed the moon. Being as short as he had been back then, the darkness was heightened by the crowd of adults and teenagers that he had routinely become tangled in whilst navigating his way around. Spider webs of beaded lights were draped wickedly over crowded stalls that sold stuffed animals and lifeless goldfish in polythene bags. The floor had been covered in dirt and strands of hay. Beyond the crowds he had heard the snorts of horses but, though he had jumped up and peered around his mom, he hadn't been able to see them. Hannah, dressed in purple overalls and a green woolly hat, had wriggled in their mother's arms and demanded to be placed on the dirty ground. After he'd all but inhaled a stick of cotton candy bigger than his head, Leon had been dragged by his mother to see the horses and donkeys at the nearby paddock. The beasts chewed lazily on straw and swished their tails as though resolutely unimpressed by the rows of people who pointed and took pictures as though they'd never seen such a creature before.

'Marco...' a tiny voice had whispered from behind him.

He had spun around and saw Hannah's half-hidden behind one of the wide gate posts.

He'd rolled his blue eyes, clumsily aping the mannerisms he'd witnessed on his mother's face throughout his childhood, 'Hannah, you can see me, Stupid. I'm right in front of you.'

'Marco! Leon, Marco!' she'd hissed back.

Folding his arms, as he'd seen his mother do a thousand times, Leon had stood his ground. He had been too old for games by then, or so he'd thought with sparkling pride and satisfaction, 'Stop being like that or I'm telling Mom. Come out of there. You look really silly you know.'

Leon had once told his sister that she hardly ever cried, her face just glowed red and her pupils got big and round till it looked like she was going to explode into a fierce and angry outburst. She'd done just that at the fair and Leon had, as always, panicked like a sucker at the hint of his sister's looming tantrum.

He'd sighed and flapped his arms, 'Fine. Whatever. Polo!'

Hannah had giggled and backed away into the crowd. He'd followed her with a reluctant smile; maybe the sugar had temporarily dissolved his ability to hesitate and to think. Or more likely he'd just been much younger and greener than he'd liked to pretend.

'Marco!' he'd screamed over the din of the fair and the hypnotically repetitive music.

'Polo!'

'Come on, Hannah. Slow down,' he had called out to her as he'd weaved past revellers and bizarre circus acts, almost tripping over a man poised on eight foot stilts and wearing a top hat twice as long as that.

Bouncing out from beside a tall, wooden shack, his sister had laughed and wrapped her arm around his, her eyes half-hidden by her oversized hat. Leon had grasped her tiny hand in his and started to drag her back to the stables. He'd been about to yell at her for going too far but a distant plume of fire had caught his eye leading him to a booth where two men had juggled fire, swords and broken glass with an enviable display of skill and blasé recklessness as though death or mortal injury was a million miles away, not at the end of their fingers. Leon had ducked away from their still oblivious parents just for a few seconds to watch and without question Hannah had followed behind him. Fire is never a static thing, but as the men flung the batons higher the air fed the flames and made them swell as if they were a breathing, living entity. Swirling lines of red and gold were inscribed against the canvas of the velvet night sky for a single second before dying away, a moment's compensation for the lack of stars. Leon had begun to clap his small, gloved hands as the display drew to an end but he had stopped after mere seconds realising that he'd been away for far too long. He had turned to tell Hannah that it was time to go but he'd found that the space behind him was empty.

'Hannah!' he'd shouted into the crowd but is voice had disintegrated against a force field of bodies, 'I'm not playing anymore. Just come out. Hannah, I want to go back to Mom.'

Still no answer. His body had reacted before his mind could face doing so. He'd tasted the remnants of his hotdog in the back of his throat as if the contents of his stomach had migrated upwards to avoid the churning in his gut.

'Alright,' he'd laughed shakily, 'Okay. Marco. Marco! Come on, play fair or I'm going and leaving you here...Fine Hannah. I'm going back now. You can stay here and live with the horses forever and ever. Okay? Bye.'

She still hadn't replied and his panic had rocketed through his throat like a firework. Shoving past spectators as fast as his small body would allow, Leon had searched for his sister. He had ridden on the coattails of his panic begging God, the wind and the gathering rain clouds, or whatever it was people prayed to, to let him find Hannah and get her back as if nothing had happened. The previous minutes when she had been with him had become a distant blur and it felt as though he had been frantically searching forever. But all he had gathered were wandering eyes and concern when he'd stood alone by the now empty stall as men and women began to frantically pack it all away before the approaching storm hit. The fair twisted before his eyes as thunder had rumbled in the distance laughing at him. It was a dangerous place, a big place, full of strange people and hungry animals and fire and sharp edges and he'd left her alone. Someone could have taken her. She was little. She trusted people. She was almost oblivious to danger and risk. She was hurt somewhere and it was his fault. It had been his job to look after her. He had seen his mother's face in his mind's eye, heard what she'd say to him, he'd known how hard she'd cry. Bitter, warm tears had pressed behind his eyelids, hammering their way out. He had felt like a total jerk for yelling at his sister. He had felt small and cold and alone, shrinking into the dust and half-wishing that the earth would suck him in as a penance, like a cosmic slot machine where his disappearance would finance the return of her. Suddenly a large hand had grabbed his arm and turned him around, almost lifting him clean off the floor.

'Leon!' his mom had cried as her long fingers had coiled around his shoulders, 'How many times have I told you not to run away like that? What did you think...I honestly don't know... what is the matter with you?' she had almost growled at him, her hazel eyes spitting sparks, 'Don't you _ever _run off like that again Leon! Why did you do that? For God's sake Leon!'

Leon had gaped at her in silence, a few isolated tears spilling out onto his face and trailing along his cold, running nose. Behind her he'd seen Alan, his expression one of calm confusion as usual, holding a strangely quiet and wide-eyed Hannah in his arms. She had gazed down at Leon in worry, nibbling on one of her gloved fingers. She was alright. Actually, they'd been looking for him this whole time. He had been the one that had been lost, not her. A sob of relief had bubbled up within him but it had popped when it had reached his lips, which had been clamped into a firm, straight line.

'Well?' his mother had let him go, risen to her towering height and tapped her sharp-ended fingers against her hips impatiently before turning back to Alan, 'Get the car Alan. We're leaving.'

By now they'd gathered quite a bit of attention but Leon had barely noticed. Alan had left with Hannah, leaving the two of them in an electric staring contest, his mother's anger in a feedback loop with his own.

Moira had given her son another disapproving glare before rubbing her cold, shaking hands together, 'Leon, go with your father.'

'He's not my father,' he'd muttered quietly before sulkily turning away.

His mother had seized his hand and pulled him back, 'Your real father was reckless and selfish and I am not going to stand for you following behind him!' her whisper was a scream, 'From now on you will be responsible and do as you're told. Is that clear? Is that clear?!'

It had been clear; as clear as her almost translucent skin and the whites of her petrified eyes. Neither had spoken again during the drive home, though Alan had tried to cool the tension inside the car with a few well-meaning but futile anecdotes. Leon had gone to bed without complaint that night and then risen for school as normal. The 'Kennedy Family Protocol' he had begun to call it once he'd reached his teens. If it's not an immediate threat, if it boils under the surface of their family unit or if it was less than proper and normal and respectable then you should pretend that it never existed. It had been days before Hannah had talked to Leon again. His foul, adolescent mood had frightened her. She'd assumed that he had been angry with her for getting him in trouble, but that hadn't been it. He hadn't been mad at his sister at all. He'd just been terrified and cowed by the blunt reminder that the people in his life were finite beings, the threads of their shared existence were looped around each other and could be sliced so easily. And it was possible, perhaps, that at any one time he could be the one holding the scissors.

Leon sighed and checked his watch, shaking himself out of the memory as if he were throwing a heavy, rain-drenched coat from his shoulders. Ten past midnight. He'd been t Union Station for half an hour and he knew that if necessary he'd wait another half hour and another and another. He was desperate enough to follow the white rabbit if it meant discovering what "Project Lazarus" entailed as well as what it had to do with Wesker, Umbrella, the CIA and Ada.

His hand flew to his pocket the second he heard the diminutive beeping of his cell phone. The screen glowed with a short message: 'Behind the tiger's back.'

Leon flicked the phone shut and glanced towards the fragile, ivory-coloured feline that pawed the air beside a thick series of brown shutters. He took a deep breath and straightened his jacket, his gun holster tapping against his chest like a second heartbeat.

_Here goes nothing._

He passed the crowds and slid behind the thick wooden shutters that blocked the waiting room from a small corner beside a disused public water fountain and a boarded up doorway. The area was an unseen enclave, just inches from plain sight.

'Agent Kennedy. Do you make friends wherever you go?' a stern, female voice muttered.

Leon squinted into the shadows, making out a plump figure perched on a metal bench with several heavily stuffed bags at her feet, 'Yeah, but I make quite a few enemies too so it balances out.'

He stepped closer and found a very short, curvy woman wrapped in a thick, brown fur coat that made her resemble a tiny rodent. Judging from her soft face, she looked about fifty-five but her sensible shoes and high-collared coat made her seem just a bit older. Her plump face was coated in a light haze of dirt and her wide, blue eyes were set far apart, giving her a faintly eccentric air. Her hair was limp and a sharp, tangy shade of red with silver streaks that seemed to be held in place by a long plastic object. A narrow and chipped set of glasses were teetering dangerously off the sharp slope of her nose. From her tattered clothes and ragged, weather beaten hair, she was either homeless or pretending to be in order to avoid direct attention. Leon had never seen her before, though on second look she did remind him of his high school math teacher. For a crazy second he wondered what exactly had become of Miss Francis; at this stage he wasn't ruling anything out.

'Sit down Leon,' she calmly patted the space on the bench beside her.

'I'll stand, thanks,' he replied, firmly but not unkindly.

Her accent was broadly American but it was a diluted mix of so many different styles and dialects leaving it completely and deliberately unremarkable. She smiled and gently lifted a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from her pocket. The packaging was silver and decorated with an elegant, black crest. She gently extracted a long cigarette with her round fingers. First microfilm, then mysterious phone calls and now an odd woman drawing me into the dark. He felt like he was strolling through a paperback spy novel.

_I hope this is worth it Ada._

'Who are you?' he asked as she reached up into her hair and slid the large pin out, letting the grey and red locks fall slack at her shoulders. The pin was in fact an ebony cigarette holder. She shoved the cigarette into the end, lit it and drew a deep taste from the end.

The woman blew a double barrelled stream of smoke through her wide nostrils and replied with a deep, relaxed lisp to her voice, 'Ah. That depends on where I am. Downtown they call me Lisa-Ann, in the very centre of the boulevards I'm Patricia and in Philadelphia I am Maria; harmless, friendly, wise.'

'And here?' Leon asked her softly.

'Zoë,' she declared suddenly and held out her plump hand, 'Pleased to meet you.'

It was a dare. "Come join me on the stage and we'll perform together." He played along, taking her hand in a firm, friendly shake. Her nails were filed down and looked like tiny, white clips embedded into her pink skin.

'Just "Zoë"?'

She grinned and sucked down so hard on her cigarette that for a moment he thought that she'd swallow the whole thing, 'People in my particular social sphere don't tend to have last names and addresses Sweetheart.'

'You're not homeless. I know it and you know it,' he replied with a calm and genuine smile, 'You called me at my apartment and then on my cell phone from an unlisted, and I'll bet untraceable, number.'

The woman chuckled, the thin skin around her eyes crinkling like foil, 'Someone else could have made that call. Maybe I was bribed to talk to you by someone who wanted to remain cushioned in the comfortable shadows.'

He shook his head, 'I don't think so. That cigarette packet in your pocket; it's an expensive European brand called "Emperor". It's manufactured in the Ukraine and can cost more than a steak dinner.'

She frowned, 'Maybe I lifted it from the pocket of some clueless tourist.'

'No. You didn't,' Leon continued patiently, 'Your fingernails are filed, manicured and a lot cleaner than mine are. There's _no way in hell_ that you've been living on the streets.'

Zoë gawped at him for a second, her thin mouth shrinking together as she glowered up at him. Then her lips parted as she barked with laughter as coarse as glass shards and coughed up a trail of smoke that had been lodged in her throat making her eyes sting, 'You know I'd...honestly be so disappointed if you hadn't spotted that Agent Kennedy! I tend to be quite sceptical of your kind. No offense but I'm no fan of spoon-fed CIA agents. Fine. I'm not homeless, but according to every database in this country I don't exist so the disguise seemed apt,' she paused and looked him up and down appreciatively, 'You're not bad to look at, at least. Tommy had warned me that you'd be a pedantic pain in the ass though.'

Leon raised an eyebrow, 'Tommy?'

'Oh,' she waved her cigarette at him and winked cheerily, 'I suppose you know him as Jonathan or George. Or even as Billy.'

'Billy,' Leon echoed her and took a step forwards, 'Billy sent you?'

He'd met the ex-Marine shortly after Raccoon City had been utterly totalled. Leon had begun his investigation into Umbrella right after admitting himself out of hospital. Despite his enthusiasm he had quickly learned that there was no way he'd be able to do it all on his own, so he set about hiring mercenaries that drifted outside the confines of the law; in short, the very people he'd been trained to throw behind solid, metal bars. Silent, noble and with a bold black tattoo snaking up his arm, Billy hadn't said much about his past, he hadn't even told Leon his surname. Leon had known better than to push him for answers. Nevertheless, despite being troubled, Billy was a strictly principled guy. He was like a lone gunman torn straight from the pages of a western. All Leon knew was that Billy had been on the run and gone underground where he'd run into some anti-Umbrella operatives and offered his man-power in exchange for vital resources. Leon had supplied him with a fake passport under the name of 'George Murphy', and in return Billy had given him a set of blue prints that had helped them to raid a dock-side warehouse owned by one of Umbrella's subsidiaries. Every now and again he and Leon would cross tracks, buy each other a beer and exchange a few words. Leon had contacted Billy, or 'Tommy' as he was supposedly now known, for information he may have had on anything called 'Project Lazarus'. Considering the life that Billy led he was always in need of money, but he was too proud to take anything that he hadn't earned. Leon hadn't expected Billy to have anything that could help him, but he'd contacted him out of habit more than anything else. He was the only non-CIA approved informant he'd approached.

'Yes, it was Billy, or should I say George or Tommy or whoever. In our lives one name is ideal, two is troublesome and more than that is nothing but danger.'

'How do you know him?' he asked, ignoring her wistful ramble.

'Call it a union of fugitives,' she muttered before plugging her lips around her cigarette again, rolling it into the corner of her wide mouth, 'I've known him for years, even before he went on the run. Nice man. Smart and silent. A very good combination. I know that from experience. He said that you were looking into Lazarus.'

Leon folded his arms to contain the sudden upsurge of anxiety and excitement in his gut, 'You heard right. So, what is it? What does it mean?'

'I'll tell you. Later,' she replied and flicked an inch-thick layer of ash from the end of her cigarette, 'But I need something from you first.'

'How much?' he asked wearily.

Zoë laughed into her fur collar, 'If only it were that simple Agent Kennedy, I could be in a warm bubble bath by now.'

'Then what do you need?'

'I want a promise. I want your word,' she continued forcefully, the glint in her eye extinguished, 'Some day soon I will need your assistance and you will provide it in exactly the way I ask you; nothing more, nothing less. That day could come in a few weeks, a few months or even a few years, but that's not your concern anyway.'

_Not my concern? Is she kidding?_

'What do you want me to do?'

'For now I am not exactly sure,' she tossed her red locks from her face, 'Don't worry, it's unlikely to be something that you won't be able to handle. It is inefficient to demand the impossible and I've seen your impressive record Mr Kennedy.'

'So that's it?' Leon hissed incredulously, 'You want me to make a blind promise to give you whatever you ask for when you contact me again?'

'Exactly,' she replied with a jaunty tilt of her head.

'How do you know that I'll honour the promise?'

The thin, brown skin around her eyes wrinkled as her lips stretched into something not quite a smile, 'Because you are a staunchly honourable man Leon Kennedy. I know your kind. It kills you to break a promise. You live for your good reputation, you polish it and brandish it like a medal wherever you go. Be kind to your elders. Just admit that you need the information.'

'And what? You're just here for kicks? You're the one that called me. Sure your information has the potential to make my day a damn sight easier but I'm prepared to go it alone if what you're offering isn't worth the money I spent on gas to get down here.'

Zoë snorted, her nostrils flaring. His first thought was of a grizzly bear, soft and cuddly from afar but an animal in every sense of the word once riled, 'Agent Kennedy. Despite your ill-advised and, frankly, unconvincing bravado, you wouldn't dare to leave this station without the information you came for. Don't try to be clever. I was working my way through enemy territory before you were even able to eat solid food.'

Leon watched her, trying to decide if she was genuine or just insane. She barely seemed to blink as she gazed forwards impassively, smoke curling from between her scarcely parted, thin lips. At least for now the ball was in his court. But agreeing to fulfil a promise before it had even been laid out before him was a huge risk. Would it be worth it at all or would he regret it? He didn't like the idea of performing a possibly illegal act for a woman clearly on the wrong side of the thin blue line.

_I'll bet that Ada would love to meet her though. Then again, the world would probably implode if these two joined forces._

'I'm not exactly comfortable with this,' he said, jaded but honest, 'I have no idea if I can trust you and I don't like being under someone else's thumb.'

'You're under no one's thumb Agent Kennedy. The fact that you are even looking into Lazarus proves that you're willing to risk a lot for the truth.'

'There are many different versions of the truth. Some reliable, some not. I'm not sure Lazarus will be the former. It's just a word to me right now.'

She frowned up at him, almost sneering now. She was getting impatient and he felt it, 'Then how did you know about Lazarus? How did you hear this word?'

'And old friend told me.'

'Hmm. Your friend has put you in the path of danger. You do know that don't you?'

'I'll take the risk if I can stop all this and she knows that.'

The woman paused and plucked at the rapidly shrinking cigarette between her finger and thumb, dispelling flakes of ash onto her lap, 'Lazarus is a general code name used in a project being run by Umbrella. It's Wesker's new obsession. An amalgamation of everything people like James Marcus and Ozwell Spencer have tried to do for decades. He has assembled a group of scientists to begin his latest project. Lazarus is the key to resurrecting Umbrella's days of glory, if you can call years of petty bickering and farcical backstabbing "glory".'

Leon's stomach lurched but he hid it well, 'And how far along is he?'

'I'm not sure. But probably more than halfway judging by his recent...activity. He could be ready in a matter of months if nothing is fucked up. Wesker wants the world to kiss his feet, as I'm sure you already know Agent Kennedy.'

'Yeah I know it firsthand. And second-hand come to think of it,' Leon replied with a grim smile, 'Lazarus is linked to the CIA somehow isn't it? Is it part of a classified investigation?'

'No. Very few agents and senators within the American hierarchy know of Lazarus. It's why I asked where you got your information from.'

'Wait a minute. How could they not know? The CIA has an entire team looking into Umbrella.'

'And how's that going?' she asked disdainfully.

'I don't know,' Leon answered testily, instinctively and unconsciously eager to defend his colleagues' work, 'I'm not on the project.'

'Aww,' she smirked, 'So you really are "going it alone". Well it looks like you've tripped and landed on top of the pile.'

'Lucky me. But Lazarus...what exactly does that code word mean?'

'Many things. For example, it's also a word that Wesker's spies in the government use to contact each other,' she replied plainly, as if she'd just given him the recipe to peach cobbler or something.

This only placed his sense of trepidation on a higher pedestal. He couldn't get away with hoping that this was all just a horrible mistake or a convoluted deception. Sometimes the simplest answer is also the right one. When you hear hoof beats you think horses, not zebras. There really was a mole in the CIA.

'Who are Wesker's spies within the government? Do you know who they are, Zoë?'

Zoë shrugged her broad shoulders and tightened her thick collar around her neck, 'I don't know. All I do know is that three months ago a large deposit was made by one of Wesker's benefactors into a Swiss Bank account under the control of a man known as Martin Scarlatti.'

'Never heard of him.'

'Neither have I. All I know is that it was a Swiss bank account, numbered 47693-385-934002. You got that?' she pressed out the fading end of her cigarette between her fingertips and shoved the dead butt into her pocket. The meeting was coming to a close and he was more concerned than ever.

Leon rolled the precious numbers through his mind, grasping the slippery strands of information. As he watched the woman fold her arms up her sleeves he considered asking her where she placed herself within this infernal chess game but he decided against it for now. Instead he did what was sensible and practical, 'How do I get in contact with you in the future?'

Zoë ducked down and grasped her plastic assortment of carrier bags in both hands. Her red and grey hair fell over her grubby face and she was transformed once again into a destitute old woman, a little strange perhaps but not an agent with no name and no past. More than half of a disguise is in the attitude after all. As the shape-shifter left him alone behind the shutter to vanish into the crowd of travellers, she took the time to mutter, 'Don't trouble yourself by even thinking about it.'

---

Their eyes finally met and Leon knew that if heaven was on his side today then the excruciating wait would be over. Craning his head above the flooding din of voices he raised his hand to his saviour and got a sharp, decisive nod in return.

_Finally. Thank you!_

Slumping back into his chair, he smiled and rubbed his swollen eyes with the back of his hand. The waiter brandishing a fresh and thickly aromatic pot of coffee began to weave through the crowd towards Leon's seat when suddenly he was ambushed by a loud congresswoman about three rows in front of him. Leon sat in wide-eyed disbelief as the waiter filled the woman's cup and shrugged in apology to indicate that he was fresh out. Grumbling a few choice words under his breath, Leon rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Taking a deep breath to disguise his yawn, he gently tugged at his coarse shirt collar and loosened his tie.

_I guess I'm staying awake without chemical assistance tonight._

It had been three days since Leon had met his shadowy contact at the train station and once again he had hid from sleep behind his work. And there was a lot of work to do so it was a pretty successful hiding place. Since returning from that meeting Leon hadn't left his desk for much more than a bathroom break; his entire life had existed within a three metre radius of his computer, his phone and an ancient fax machine. The cycle of daylight had been lost under the ice-blue lights of the subterranean archive area where he'd sat pawing through ancient, yellowed documents and making wild, illegible notes on a pad of paper like a madman, snapping several pencils by the hour. Apparently that was considered 'unhealthy' despite the fact that he'd been doing work just like it for the past six years and so far hadn't lost his mind. But this wasn't his job anymore. He had to focus on organising the security for the President's next campaign abroad. That was what they were paying him for and no amount of urgent transfer requests was going to make a difference. They'd frog-marched him out of the building when he'd been too low on caffeine to argue back. He was on paid leave, not to call the department unless it was an emergency and not to engage in any activities. Especially not those connected to Umbrella or _any _of its operatives, in particular ones with the initials A.W. This mission wasn't his baby anymore. Leon was half-convinced that he'd been sent home because he was making the other agents look lazy by comparison but even the hot, bubbling undercurrents of his frustration weren't enough to truly convince him that this was the case.

_It's not obsession, it's an enthusiastic interest. It's my job._

But after all his paper-pushing and shrewd phone conversations, there was nothing incriminating about 'Martin Scarlatti' in any database under the sun, just a list of businesses and charities that he liaised with but didn't work for. He had no consistent address, he frequented budget hotels despite flying everywhere first class and he always paid with cash, no cheques or credit cards. His Swiss bank accounts accepted money in, but he'd never withdrawn so much as a dollar or a Euro. He was only half a man.

Days later the President's invitation had landed on Leon's mat. The summons had been delivered at the last minute, but there was no doubt that he'd turn up. He'd made a promise to Ashley after all and even though the idea of a formal meal sent him into a tumble of discomfort, he knew that he hadn't just been invited out of politeness. However, what he'd thought of as a gathering of family turned out to be a full state affair. Politicians, visiting diplomats and business moguls buzzed around the room in eveningwear, satin gowns, tuxedos and rigid shirt collars bound together by seamlessly knotted bowties. There had been a five course meal that he'd thoroughly enjoyed after a week on just fruit and stale vending machine chocolate.

'Just family and friends huh?' he'd teased Ashley when she'd bounded up to him in a lavender ball gown with a chunky, ruffled skirt.

'It kinda... grew over time,' she shrugged with a sunny grin, her lips tainted pink from too many sips of red wine.

Leon had provided a steadying hand as she staggered slightly on her heels, 'Hey, pace yourself or you'll leave the rest of us behind.'

She'd laughed and then insisted that he save a dance for her later. To his horror she'd been dragged away before he could explain that he'd never been much of a dancer.

As President Graham genially welcomed his guests with a few badly rehearsed one-liners, Leon steadily watched the group of special service agents, men and women who were technically his colleagues, as they stood near the exits and calmly muttered into their earpieces. They were doing a good job. There was absolutely no viable reason for him to haul ass out of that chair and insist on helping them out. He didn't know whether to be proud or a little disappointed.

_Ashley's right. You are a control freak._

'Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States,' the sharp-suited aid at the podium announced, his final words swamped under a hearty applause.

President Graham, or 'Michael' as he had insisted Leon call him, ascended the platform at the head of the room and smiled weakly at the five hundred guests that had been beaconed to his home for the private event. He usually projected a degree of warmth stronger than the Florida sunshine, filling the room like any politician should if he expected to last more than a term in office. But the past few weeks had beaten that out of him and it took lighting and good make-up to cover the ashy tint to his cheeks. He was slowly recovering, but this temporary show of weakness on his part was like shedding a few drops of blood. It was enough for the vultures to start circling. Leon had suggested that the President bring forward his annual vacation, just to give his family time to relax and readjust, but Michael had refused.

Hiding another yawn behind his hand, Leon's head drooped forward and his chin almost hit his chest. Snapping up straight, he blinked his rusty eyelids a few times and shook his head. The woman beside him was starring straight ahead but he knew she thought that he was half-crazy. Leon smirked as his eyes drooped close again. He was in the back row so maybe it didn't matter if he stole a few minutes in that limbo between asleep and awake. Maybe it'd do him good and prevent him from staggering around like a headless zombie on the dance floor later.

'When I decided to run for office I think my father was the most sceptical of my decision but he held back from telling me to give up,' President Graham continued at the front of the room, 'He knew that I'd be happy in the White House because "happiness isn't harmony, it's the ability to look discord in the eye and break it down into pieces". He'd obviously never sat through a conference at the U.N but after the past few weeks I'll reluctantly admit that the old guy had a point, which brings me to the proposed bill that's got you all talking. Now I know that Joanna Rivers is an esteemed journalist but her sources can not be relied upon until I have...'

President Graham's speech spluttered and broke apart into tiny shards of sound and Leon's strained to hear through the approaching fog. The sound wasn't lost to him, it was all around him in pieces; unrecognisable but everywhere. A soft, velvet growl rose up in layers and swallowed the words like a tiger, sucking them between its teeth and swirling them around its tongue. It sounded like a car engine. Leon said 'goodbye' to reality all over again. He was fine-tuned to it all. He could almost sense the dreams coming now; he picked up their scent like a bloodhound, though he had yet to learn how to stop and resist its pull. Heat licked at the tip of his nose and his forehead, and the smell of freshly clipped grass tickled his nostrils tempting him into an acidic sneeze. With an abrupt click the low rumbling noise was cut and sliced away like an unwanted slab of meat. It sounded like the fall of a guillotine. Leon opened his eyes, his hand automatically flying up to bat at his hyper-sensitive nose. His body was cupped tenderly in a black leather car seat, the belt snug around his hips and chest. It was noon and the cloudy sky was like pure, driven snow melting far above him. The bonnet of an expertly polished, red sports car stretched out like a hill of blood beyond the windshield directly in front of his face. It was a two-seater convertible, curvaceous and compact. But it sure wasn't his. Leon stirred against the richly snug confines of the car and noticed that he wasn't wearing his black dinner suit anymore. Nevertheless, it had been replaced with a light jacket, a freshly pressed navy shirt, that was free of any ancient and mysterious stains, and he was also wearing a grey tie and black shoes; all so unusually formal. He was waiting for something special.

'Are we going in?' the driver in the next seat asked, heavily cynical and impatient, 'Or are we just going to sit out here all day enjoying the fresh air? I think I could use a drink, don't you?'

He didn't jump, he didn't yell out in surprise. Maybe he was getting a little too used to having his consciousness bounced from court to court like a tennis ball or perhaps he was just, as usual, sent into a tailspin by the sound of her voice. Ada. Leon stared at her, taking in her rigid posture as she sat in the driver's seat beside him. This had to be her car. Of course it was her car. She was wearing a deep, burgundy dress; a layer of fabric that was draped over her body like waves of rushing water suddenly frozen in place. It twisted around her supple shoulders and neck, plunging to reveal a pale valley below her throat and sailed over her bare thighs, the hem draping over her knees. The dress was actually enjoying her, revealing in her shape like the hands of a familiar lover and he couldn't blame it for a moment. She was breathtaking. A pair of grey sunglasses dangled from her fingertips but her hands, with their ruby painted nails, were still on the wheel of the stationary vehicle. Her deep green eyes were riveted on the windshield as if she were expecting an ambush to pop up from under the hood of her car. She tapped her fingers against the steering wheel as her white teeth sunk like staples into her lower lip and stained themselves pink on her lip-gloss. Her lustrous black hair was swept away from her paper-white face and her shoulders were hunched and tight.

Leon gazed at her, registering mild shock and morbid curiosity. He'd never seen her like this before, at least not so close up that he could touch her and prove that it was real. Ada Wong was _nervous_. Honest to god, wriggling in her seat as if she was ten seconds away from spreading her delicate wings and taking off. He longed to study the contours of her delicate frown and count the minute quivers that made the bracelets on her wrists rattle (this was a once in a life time event, it had to be). But he felt concerned for her and her anxiety began to envelop his neck and choke him like a rope.

'Well?' she murmured, turning to face him as her hands fell from the wheel and onto her lap.

'I...I guess. Yeah,' he replied hoarsely.

Leon followed her line of sight to the view beyond his window. He was on a quiet suburban street. Clean sidewalks skirted politely around the immaculate gardens and sculpted hedges tall enough to be imposing but short enough to be polite and sociable. In the distance, well-dressed men and women strolled past the white wedding cake houses and the double garages. His eyes found the focal point of the street; _his _focal point, the nearest of those houses. It had polished windows hat gleamed at him like the eyes of a starving wolf. There was a dent in the garage door from where his sister had accidently written off her first car and the white rose trellis that his mother had planted when he was sixteen was still flourishing and so heavy that it threatened to crush the doorframe. He smiled inwardly.

_This is Mom's house in Los Angeles. I'm home. Well, sort of._

Still rapt on the building ahead, Leon fumbled clumsily to unclip his seatbelt and pushed open the car door. He swung his feet out onto the litter-less, concrete pavement but before he could stand, the front door of the house was thrown open.

'There you are!' a tall woman with wild and curly blonde hair, her dress covered in such a random pattern of exotic flowers that it looked as though someone had swallowed several tubs of paint and then thrown up on her, 'You're late Honey. Did you forget where you lived or what?'

As she scuttled down the drive way in her heels, two small terriers followed behind her sniffing at her legs. Her laugh was thunderous as she threw her doughy arms around Leon's neck almost tackling him back into the car seat.

'Aunt Sarah?' Leon gasped as she crushed his ribs.

The two light brown terriers, disaster on legs, began to bark at them and bounce up and down like hyperactive children on a sugar rush.

'Patty, Jackie! Shut up!' Sarah yelled above the noise before quietly conspiring with Leon, 'I'm about five minutes away from drugging their food in order to get a little shut eye. My only solace is that they're driving your mom nuts and that's _always_ fun to watch as I'm sure you remember Kiddo.'

Leon laughed and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. It was the first time he'd recognised anyone in these dreams besides Ada, Hannah or his dad. Sarah was pretty much his favourite relative second to his sister, of course when those two women got into the same room together he usually had a blast. Sarah McKenzie was his mother's younger sister. She'd spent most of her life running a book store in downtown New York and she'd never married because to this day she was still waiting for Robert Redford to become available. And though they were an impeccably loyal pair, his mom and aunt could argue up a tornado. Having stayed true to her blue collar roots out of stubborn pride, Sarah felt that her older sister had sold out by insisting on living a life in the suburbs, joining the PTA and having cocktail parties. Sarah had been the first person Leon had told about his acceptance into the Police Academy.

He heard the car door thump shut behind him, and then Ada's shoes flicking the sidewalk as she circled the hood of the car and came to a stop by his side. Patty and Jackie whimpered up at her and began to edge towards the car, sniffing the wheels.

'Sarah,' Leon began, too formal to be natural but he needed a crutch to get through this, 'This is Ada Wong. Ada this is my favourite aunt in the world.'

Sarah slapped him on the shoulder leaving a palm-sized bruise, 'Don't try to charm me Leon. I'm not going to let you off for not warning me that she's so gorgeous. I'm shamelessly jealous,' she nodded at Ada and smiled so broadly she flashed three gold fillings, 'Hello Sweetheart. I've been wanting to meet you.'

Ada's left eyebrow leapt up to kiss her hairline but she immediately offered a handshake, 'I'm...very pleased to meet you too.'

Sarah batted the hand away and grabbed Ada's shoulders, pressing a quick to kiss to each of her cheeks. To her credit Ada kept her balance better than Leon had, but she still flinched a little at the onslaught.

'Come on in,' Aunt Sarah beckoned them towards the front door, 'Your mom's been tearing around the house trying to find the centre pieces and she'll be pleased for the distraction of your arrival. Plus she needs another man in the house to stop Alan from accidently setting the food alight...again.'

She gave a shrill whistle and the dogs tore along the lawn behind her covering their tiny paws in mud and grass. They'd likely end up soiling his mom's carpets and causing another minor melt down at this rate. Leon smiled shyly and shoved his hands into his pockets. He turned to Ada to find her gently wiping the war-paint stripes of mauve lipstick that Sarah had inadvertently left on her cheeks. She fiddled with her dress and smoothed it against her palms. Faint threads of classical music began to weave their way out from the open front door across the lawn.

_Guess Mom's having a dinner party._

It'd explain the clothes, the music and Sarah. But it didn't explain Ada. Why was she here exactly? Unless...unless he'd invited her home to meet his family. The last time he'd invited a girl home had been Alice from high school and that had been a total circus. He hadn't been able to look her in the eye for weeks afterwards. More to the point why would Ada even want to meet his relatives and friends?

_There's only one way to find out. Besides it's just a dream. If you embarrass yourself again you can just shock yourself awake._

He slowly approached Ada after a nervous pause that had involved the shuffling of his feet. He felt like a fifth grader at a dance as he offered her his arm, 'Shall we?'

She gave a brusque nod and slid her elegant hand into the nook of his elbow, 'Your aunt is...a striking woman.'

'That a polite way of saying "crazy"?' he whispered as they strolled across the lawn and reached the blue front door that both shone and reeked from a recent fresh layer of paint.

Ada shook her head, her bangs falling forwards to tickle her nose, 'Oh we're all a little crazy Handsome. Some of us just hide it better than others.'

They entered the empty foyer of the house, closing the door behind them. The main reception area was dominated by a grand staircase that twisted up to the first and second floors. The walls were swathed in forest green wallpaper and a strict line of family photographs leading the way into the heart of the home. As he hung his coat on the rack in the corner, Ada looked around politely, twisting around to spy the tall antique mirror, the ornamental china dolls and the collection of old, broke umbrellas.

_Why do I get the feeling that she's scoping out possible exits? _

Ada gently extracted her hand from his arm and wandered over to the first photograph on the wall. It had been the first family portrait they'd taken after his mom had married Alan when Leon was eight years old.

'And this is your family,' she said softly while inspecting the picture, her eyes soaking in every little detail, 'How old are you here?'

'Eight or nine,' he answered following behind her though his eyes weren't on the picture, 'I really don't remember having this photo taken. But I do remember that shirt. It was one of my favourites though it made me look a little pale.'

He winced realising that that was a serious understatement. He looked like a tiny ghost.

'I agree. Lilac really isn't your colour. You look better in something darker. Navy perhaps? It brings out your eyes,' Ada replied with a smile before moving on to the next photograph. It was one from seven years later.

She frowned up at it for a few seconds before laughing lightly and folding her arms over her abdomen to contain her giggles.

Leon bit his lip to keep from chuckling along with her but he lost the battle as mortifying teenage memories came flooding back. Time could transform the humiliating into the hilarious. It was a slow, difficult but ultimately rewarding metamorphosis, though he'd considered it impossible when he'd been younger.

'Yeah, I know. Not my best photograph by a mile. My braces didn't take the first time so I had to have them fitted again when I was fourteen. I had them on until graduation.'

'It's cute in an abstract sort of way,' Ada looked back at him cheekily, 'Maybe I'll ask your mother for a copy.'

'You're bluffing,' Leon grinned slyly, squinting at her.

'I'm not,' she breathed, as though ice wouldn't melt on her tongue, 'Agent Khan would love to see it, and then there's Jennifer at the front desk...'

He grabbed her gently by the shoulders and steered her away from the photographs, 'I'm going to have to keep a close eye on you aren't I?'

Ada stood facing him, her expression just an inch away from tenderness; it would be so easily mistaken for aloofness if not for the gentle drooping of her eyelids. She was like language, the signs, the context, the subtlety and he had been learning her word by word and look by look during every moment they had spent together.

'Like you weren't going to watch me already?' she asked him airily as her attention was steadily diverted from the past to the present and onto him, 'Don't worry Leon. I'll be on my best behaviour. Now keep still.'

She reached up and stroked her fingers along the silk of his tie, the soft scraping of her scarlet nails on the fabric made his chin fall involuntarily towards his chest, bringing him one impulsive decision away from her lips. Pinching the knot between her finger and thumb, Ada slowly loosened it and straightened the material, running her palm along the finished arrangement with a look of approval on her face.

It was slightly surreal, watching Ada stand against the wall of his family home made him realise how much red really clashed with green. 'Overwhelming' was the word of the day as far as he was concerned. He'd struggled for a long time to keep his work and family in neat, separate worlds that he could cross to and from at will. Having Ada, the breathing, bleeding icon of everything bizarre in his existence, thrown into his childhood home, brought that barrier crashing down on top of him.

'You look really beautiful,' he whispered, cupping her shoulder in his right hand and brushing his thumb against her cool skin.

He didn't even realise he'd said the words until Ada's eyes ascended to his. She tapped her fingers lightly across his chest and a slight smile flowered on her rosy lips.

_How did I persuade you to come here Ada? What could I have said to you?_

He parted his lips to ask.

'Leon,' his mother called from the end of the hall before he could sound off a single syllable, 'We expected you an hour ago. We were worried.'

Moira Michaels, previously known as Moira Kennedy, stepped forward, rubbing her hands on a small towel. Her grey hair was neatly clipped behind her head, framing the subtle lines of her face, and her burnt-orange dress rustled as she moved. Her neck was bound by a deep gold choker with tassels that swayed above her collar bone. Moira was shorter than her sister and her narrow nose was perched between a pair of bold cheekbones giving her a faintly regal air.

'Sorry Mom. Hi, you look great,' Leon replied, jogging forwards to meet her halfway and giving her a tight hug, which she returned with a kiss above his ear.

Her perfume engulfed him like a vanilla cloud.

'You must be Ada Wong,' said Moira, turning towards her, 'Leon's not told us much about you. It's nice you could make it.'

His mother's stony tone of voice made him desperately uncomfortable. Leon stared at her intently to get her to go easy on Ada but she simply looked away from his pleading look. She wasn't interested in her and that was clear, but it made Leon wish that he could grab Ada by the arm and take them both far away from here. It went without saying that Ada Wong was no wilting flower, but he didn't want her to feel unwelcome.

Her expression composed, Ada tilted her head in recognition and accepted Moira's brisk handshake, her bold bracelets clinking together, 'Thank you for inviting me. You have a lovely home.'

Moira shot her a smile so tight that her lips almost caved in, 'Thank you. Please come out to the backyard. The food's almost ready as long as Alan doesn't burn another batch of ribs,' she took Leon's arm, 'Olivia and Kevin are here with Penelope, and Geoffrey flew out from Boston after all. You have to make time to talk to him. He hasn't seen you since your graduation. Helen and Roy couldn't make it but they sent Georgia...you remember her don't you? From summer camp when you were fourteen? She got her hair caught in your braces, remember? Hannah and Mathew are waiting in the solarium and I've shut Sarah's dogs in the utility room. You wouldn't believe what they walked into the carpets. I'm not even going to check the state of the front lawn until after dinner. I just don't need that kind of stress right now. How have you been?'

'Everything's fine Mom,' he said distantly as she led them into the glass suntrap at the back of the house that over looked the spacious and colourful garden.

Floral couches paid homage to the expensive flower boarders outside and a wicker rug decorated with a golden fringe and muddy footprints lay in the middle of the wooden floor. The conservatory was lined with a rainbow of coloured glass at the top and its main doors were wide open as if reaching out into the backyard. Leon counted off the number of distant cousins, family friends, neighbours and strangers that his mind had conjured up for him that evening. Cousin Kevin, a realtor from Kentucky that once dipped Leon's hand in warm water during a sleepover when they were nine, and his wife Olivia stood by the barbeque chatting with Alan who was currently encircled by black smoke from the outdoor grill. His mother's golf buddies and Alan's law associates were sipping white wine in the sun whilst their kids crawled around the tables looking up women's skirts. Uncle Geoffrey, his mother's younger brother, was on what looked like his eighth beer, the other empties were in a pile by his chair, and Aunt Sarah was laying a fifteen foot long garden table outside, chasing the cloth napkins as the wind blew them across the yard.

Moira sighed, 'I'll be right back,' she tripped out into the yard to help Sarah, stopping to stroke Hannah Kennedy's hair as she wandered over from the other end of the solarium. Hannah, in a smart baby-blue trouser suit, smiled at her brother. Her arms were full with a fidgeting toddler that Leon didn't recognise.

'Marco...' she murmured as she sauntered over balancing the child on her hips.

'Polo...' Leon sung back as walked forward and embraced her, theatrically kissing the top of her head and making her laugh.

Hannah turned to the kid in her arms, 'Nathan, say hi to Uncle Leon.'

'_Uncle Leon'? There's no one that calls me that...so this must be..._

He suddenly recalled his sister's phone call all those days ago concerning her pregnancy. If this dream was set a couple of years after Spain then this had to be her son. Yet more crazy logic. Leon stared down at the two year old boy, his 'nephew'. He had a mop of dark hair like his mother and his mouth was covered in what looked like honey. The kid gave Leon a wave and shy 'hello' before burying his sticky face into his mother's jacket. He was a handsome kid. He'd defiantly taken after the Kennedy side of the family. And in this dream Hannah had named him after their father. Leon smiled, wondering if his subconscious was trying to spell something out for him.

'Nathan's missed you,' Hannah continued as she stroked her son's back, 'We've all missed you. Where've you been that you can't come for a visit every now and again? Antarctica or something?'

_Knowing my job, I'd say so._

'Something like that,' Leon turned back to where Ada was patiently waiting with her fingers interlaced in front of her stomach, 'Hannah, this is Ada.'

Hannah peeked behind Leon's shoulder, 'Hi! Leon, take Nathan. Be careful he's just eaten and he's been grouchy all afternoon. He's due for a nap.'

She deposited her son in Leon's arms. The kid latched onto his shoulders and immediately began to play with his tie, loosening its neat composition. Leon tickled him gently under the arms, smiling as the boy giggled and let go.

Hannah dusted her hands off on her lap and wandered over to greet Ada, 'Welcome to the mad house. I'll have to apologise for my brother not letting us meet you sooner. He lives in a world of his own.'

Ada paused, staring almost blankly at Hannah, before breaking out her most charming smile, 'Yes. I've noticed.'

'Hannah. Can you at least have the courtesy to wait till after lunch before you turn her against me?' Leon called to his sister but she ignored him with a toss of her long, brown hair.

'Hush Leon, we're talking,' she replied before turning back to Ada, 'So, how did you two meet? I wanna hear all about it.'

Ada glanced away for a moment, her pale green eyes locking with his, 'We met at an exhibit in Washington last year. I'm an art dealer at the National Gallery and we just hit it off.'

Leon pursed his lips for a second but played along. The lie made sense since the truth of their first meeting was classified and would probably leave his sister deeply troubled or just totally confused.

Hannah nodded and smiled, 'Oh really? What did you talk about?'

'Monet's use of colour and perspective,' Ada replied easily, 'The exhibit was based around French impressionists.'

'Seriously?' his sister frowned.

'No,' Ada shrugged with a playful smirk, 'He just asked me where the bathroom was.'

Hannah snorted with laughter, 'I can see it...I can definitely see it.'

Leon gently extracted his tie from baby Nathan's mouth, 'You see Nathan...you see how mean your mommy is?'

His sister rolled her eyes, 'Don't you dare. I am just slowly getting even with you for what you did to my dolls house.'

'I was ten years old!'

'That is no excuse Leon Scott Kennedy and you know it,' she pointed at him accusingly making Nathan gurgle in amusement.

'Dolls house?' Ada enquired, genuinely curious.

'He broke it,' Hannah sighed wistfully.

'By accident,' Leon insisted but the look in Ada's eyes told him that she wasn't buying it for a second.

'I bet he leaves a trail of destruction wherever he goes in Washington.'

'Believe me you don't know the half of it,' replied Ada sending Leon a knowing shrug.

'Hannah,' a voice called out from beyond the glass doors.

Mathew Ryan, Hannah's husband, entered the room breathing heavily, his face pink and shiny. He'd been a young lawyer at Alan's firm when he and Hannah had met. They'd dated for over five years, on and off, before they'd married. Leon acutely remembered the exact shade of red his sister's eyes were during the occasions that she'd cried herself sick after Matt had dumped her for another woman. He'd asked again and again why Hannah, a smart and confident person, would forgive such a guy and take him back, but she'd always replied with the same thing: "Because life is a pretty lonely place if you can't find it in yourself to forgive the people you love". As time went on Matt had grown into a reasonably descent guy. But he had a habit of displaying extreme arrogance that his recent partnership at the law firm had cultivated even further. Leon tolerated him for his sister's sake.

'Hannah, Moira needs to know where you put the salad forks,' Matt said urgently.

'They're in the drawer where they always are,' Hannah declared waving her palms in front of her.

'They're not there. We've looked. You must have put them somewhere else.'

Hannah sighed, 'Can't it wait? Leon's here with Ada.'

Matt gave Leon a distracted nod but turned back to his wife without a word, 'Your mom is insisting that you come and help. Don't leave me on my own down there with her. You know what she's like!'

'Jesus. Alright,' Hannah turned back to Ada, giving her a gentle pat on the arm, 'It was nice talking with you. I swear I'll be back in a minute.'

'Do you want me to help?' Leon asked.

'No. It's okay. You know the saying. Too many cooks drives Mom crazy. Just keep Nathan busy,' Hannah called back as she dashed out of the conservatory after Matt.

'She's nice,' Ada muttered as she took a seat on one of the couches, crossing her long legs and rotating her ankle in a lazy circle.

'You...liked her?' Leon asked carefully as he joined her on the couch, gently bouncing Nathan on his lap.

'Well, yes I suppose,' she replied, staring at the little boy and slowly shuffling a couple of inches away from them, 'Did you really break her doll house?'

Leon rolled his tongue along the back of his teeth, 'Yeah. But it was an accident, I swear. I was playing in the backyard and I sort of...fell on it.'

Ada dragged her teeth against her bottom lip and her eyes shone a little, 'Fell on it? Apart from that I bet you were a good big brother. You seem the type.'

He gazed at her for a moment, 'I'm glad that you like her. It means a lot to me that you like them. I'd never really thought about it but...I guess it really does.'

Ada hesitated, her lips dancing between a soft smile and a sarcastic smirk. She placed her hand on his arm, rubbing his shoulder and spreading a pulse of warmth through his chest. Before she could pull away little Nathan's hand shot out and grasped the shiny gold loops around her wrists. Ada was wide-eyed as she watched him. The child seemed enchanted by the light and colours of her jewellery, and the cold imprint of metal into his soft, fresh skin.

'Do you want to hold him?' Leon asked with enthusiasm, the words leaping out before he could second guess himself and shut up, 'He's no trouble. Honestly.'

'I don't think that I should,' she gently tugged her arm away from the inquisitive toddler.

'Give it a try.'

'No. I'd rather...'

'He's not booby trapped.'

'He looks perfectly happy with you Leon,' she replied firmly.

'It's not a problem. He's friendly and I think he likes you. Holding him is easy. Be firm and balance him against your arm. Just imagine that he's an AK47,' Leon insisted as he lifted Nathan onto Ada's lap before she could move away.

Ada uncrossed her legs and glared at him darkly. Nathan, who was already half asleep by this point and drooling steadily onto his overalls, gave a little squeak as he was shuffled to lie against her chest. He nuzzled her gently and blinked up at her before drifting off to sleep. She balanced his head against her shoulder and braced her hand against his back, glancing back to Leon questioningly.

'You can rock him a little if he starts to squirm,' he suggested quietly.

'Do you know a lot about children?' she murmured, not taking her eyes off the child on her knee.

He stroked Nathan's fine, silky hair through his fingertips, 'Yeah, a little. I used to babysit the neighbour's children for extra cash when I was in high school. Next door had three kids all under the age of six. They were great but if you turned your back on them for more than five minutes they'd end up climbing the furniture and jumping off,' he chuckled, 'I used to send them out into the backyard and make them run around in circles until they were too tired to resist going to bed. When the news got out around the town I ended up being fully booked every Friday night. Can't imagine having kids of my own though, because of my job and everything.'

Ada seem to barely hear him but he carried on talking softly anyway, even though he rambled and repeated himself like a narrator on a bad public service announcement. He was sure that silence would snap her out of the daze that had descended upon her eyes like fog on a green valley. She looked almost peaceful like this; hypnotically sleepy, her lips flushed pink, her breathing so slight that her chest barely moved. Not exactly maternal, but definitely tender; ferociously tender even, like a tigress in the grass guarding her young with a growl on her lips. Her hold was firm, strong and precise, something that over a decade of deadly special service training had instilled into her supple hands, though for uses a universe away from this. The child felt safe with her. Leon had seen her like this only once, in Raccoon City when she'd plugged the persistent leak of blood from his wounded shoulder. He shifted in his seat and rested his head against the back of the couch, willing her to stay this way for a moment longer. And his questions didn't exist in that moment, nor did his suspicions or his fears. Nothing else was present outside of this room. She'd shut the doors on doubt somehow. All he knew was that it had been this very look in her eyes that had made him really, truly care about her all those years ago, not just as a civilian to protect but as an enigma to cherish, a woman to adore.

'Hey kids,' Aunt Sarah peered into the room before shuffling inside, 'Oh, he likes you. You must have a magic touch because it's difficult to get him down for a nap. He's usually jumpier than cat on hot coals,' she beamed at Ada and Nathan.

Ada glanced up abruptly, alarmed and disorientated as if she'd just woken up from a deep sleep. She quickly gathered Nathan up and pressed him gently into Leon's arms, rubbing her hands over her bare knees before standing up. She took a shuddering breath and rolled the kinks out of her shoulders. Leon rose to his feet holding his sleeping nephew, not daring to look her in the eye right now. He sensed that she needed a bit of space, though he was too curious to let her reaction wander away into the lost caverns of his memory. He'd back off for now, but he wouldn't stay away forever.

'News of your return has got out I'm afraid,' Sarah continued breezily, tossing her head in the direction of the garden, 'You can't put it off any longer Kiddo. Come out and meet the brood.'

Leon nodded and peered over Nathan's head to shoot Ada his deepest smile, 'Ada. You hungry?'

He'd known before he'd even spoke that the sensitive air to Ada's face, the sparkling glaze to her eyes and the pink rush on her cheeks would all be gone by the time he looked back at her, but that didn't make it any easier to accept. Nonetheless, there was still _something_ there between them. The moment itself had passed away like a dying star and yet its light and warmth was still reaching them.

She stared back beyond the doors and into the yard, the sunlight dusting the shadows from her face, 'Yes,' she replied, 'Famished actually.'

---

_So...umm now you can see what goes on inside my head when I should be doing other things. :-)_

_(Runs and hides)_

_(Reappears)_

_See you next __**Wednesday**_

_(Runs off before she's late for work)_


	10. My Family and Other Issues

**Faith**

_Author's note: Hello again! _

_**List of Romantics: **__Thank you. And I always picture Leon and Ada with a daughter too. I don't know why exactly. I think my story, Hope, was the first one I personally saw that had Leon and Ada have a child, and every story I've read since then that has them procreate has given them a girl as well. I honestly can't articulate why I picture them with a daughter before a son...but you never know. I might throw a little boy in a future story (hint, hint)._

_**Vogue: **__I aim to please._ :D

_**L.O.T.S: **__Yay! Another 16Volt fan. I heard their music for the first time when playing 'Primal' and every album of theirs that I have has impressed me._

_And if you guys haven't noticed I've started to put up a new, silly, AU Leon/Ada fic. It should be on the first page near this one or you can check my profile page. I kept it under-wraps as a surprise (Leon and Ada wrapped in a big red bow if you will) so I hope you like it. It's my Valentines Day gift to everyone as a thank you for this past year. It's also been a year since I started writing fan fiction and meeting you all so it's an anniversary of sorts too._

**Chapter 10**

**My Family and Other Issues**

_As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so it is the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors and to compose and determine all emergent differences there._

_--John Donne_

Life was a system of frameworks that people created to survive. People, places, relationships, family, friends, lovers, enemies. Leon had lived in one particular framework for his entire childhood. It had mutated occasionally, he had broken a few of its bars every now and then, but it had taught him a thousand valuable lessons. One of those was to always eat something _before_ coming to one of his step father Alan's barbeques because the chance of getting anything halfway edible during the event was pretty low.

Then again, making up rules is easy, but living by them is hard.

This was why Leon had, despite years of experience, risked taking a bite of that hotdog and now an hour later it still felt as though it was protruding from the depths of his throat like a second Adam's apple. His mom had been apoplectic when the grill had overheated again and incinerated her last batch of meat. Hannah had been too busy putting Nathan down to sleep to notice. Matt, likewise, had been oblivious as he'd shut himself away in the peace of Alan's study to catch up on a law review.

Uncle Geoffrey was unconscious in the sun. His nose had begun to resemble a cherry on a round cupcake and he occasionally gave off a series of gassy burps. His mom's golfing buddies had rallied around her, offering polite and tentative words of comfort and assistance, but Moira had waved them off and rushed to the kitchen for more wine to distract them from their whimpering stomachs. Alan had shrugged genially at the mess and threw himself into a chair; his fingers and face, except his eyes where he'd been wearing glasses, were blackened by soot. After catching up with Leon for a quick talk, Alan had settled by the long garden table with a copy of the LA Times and a cold beer, indulging in a moment's peace.

Ada had been diplomatic and quiet all evening, even when Sarah's dogs had escaped from the utility room and gone berserk on the grill, dragging off a rope of charcoal sausages into the rose bushes at the end of the garden.

Home wasn't a just a physical place, it was a concept and this dream sure felt like home to him. The detail was breathtaking from the invisible crickets that croaked from the grass to the rolling crescendo of his aunt's laughter. His mind had suddenly become a master craftsman. Not restrained by glass, brick, wood, or flesh, it used the medium of dreams to sculpt, slice, press, and shape. Despite the sunny glow of his family along with the cavalcade of pinpoint accurate memories, he couldn't think of anything to get Ada to open up to him. She'd clung to her wine glass like it was the handle of her gun. There was a guarded and apprehensive look in her eyes whenever his family or friends approached them, even though she answered every question with sincerity and a detached graciousness.

By four thirty, Sarah had intercepted Leon on her way back from the bathroom and tugged on his arm.

'Usually as a rule I try not to interfere. You know that I'm not pushy,' she'd said, her voice hushed but still capable of being heard at the other end of the garden, 'Still everyone's gotta have a contingency plan. I knew that Alan was going to nuke the pork chops so I made sandwiches. They're in the car. Come give me a hand Kiddo.'

Moira hated being outdone by anyone in her own home. It was a field she considered her territory, with its rosebush boundaries and silver-lined trophy cases. She was as competitive as a pit-bull though she'd be the last to admit it. She'd won the women's trophy at her golf club for the previous four years. Hannah used to joke that their mom and Leon were alike in that respect and that was why they disagreed so often.

When they'd sat down to cold turkey sandwiches and coffee cake, Leon had slowly lured his mother out of a bitter swamp of silence by asking about her about her golf and the garden. Moira had lamented the mayfly that had invaded her flower boarders and the difficulties of getting a good tree surgeon in the fall, and then she'd described the new décor of the lounge at her country club down to every last burgundy throw cushion. Hannah had joined in and happily narrated, with plenty of hand gestures and outlandish faces, the occasion when baby Nathan had rolled over for the first time on his own. That one had made even Ada smile.

Halfway through her eighth breadstick and her third Manhattan cocktail, Sarah had spoken up at her usual seventy decibel volume, 'Ada, we've been awfully rude and not asked you anything about yourself Sweetheart. So tell us a little something. Where are you from?'

Leon was left slack jawed at the ease with which his aunt had begun her interrogation, asking things he'd been too cowardly to approach. What's more Ada had answered. Sure her answers had more than their fair share of monosyllabic words and were usually less than five words long, but it was a start.

Ada's place of birth, her star sign, her favourite wine.

He was so enchanted by the idea of digging a little deeper that he forgot for a moment that this was a dream. He'd forgotten that he was digging through thin air.

But by the fourth question of Sarah's inquisition Ada had become drawn and pale. She dug her fingernails into her napkin, twisting it around her long fingers. Her answers were becoming stilted and her green eyes were darting across the tabletop. He was burning to hear her talk a little more, to lift the curtain an inch or two higher, but he knew that she simply didn't like to talk about her past.

Turning to his aunt, Leon had interrupted smoothly and asked her how her bookshop in New York was doing. Sarah had launched into a rant about the large superstore chains and their dirty deals on wholesale, half-price books that were attempting to steal away her regular customers. It may have been delirium from the heat or the hunger, but during his aunt's tirade Leon had been sure that he'd felt Ada's fingers tenderly caress the back of his hand in gratitude as she'd reached for her wine glass.

After the food had been reduced to crumbs, Hannah had asked Leon to come with her for a walk in the land beyond the garden. Past the fence of their private garden lay a twenty-acre expanse of grass and two large walnut trees whose ageless trunks were wide enough to hide three men. Beyond were more houses and the distant rise and fall of the silver city.

Despite the good weather, the area was empty except for a few birds and a stray tabby cat that slunk around the edges trying to catch a meal. It was a communal space shared by the street and saved from the developers by being divided up evenly between residents. Only a few of them had ever wanted to sell but they'd been bullied out of it for the sake of the children that played in area. To a child this land was a million miles away from anywhere.

The sun was starting to dip low into the sky and the shadows of the surrounding two trees were spreading further and further towards the house like reaching fingers.

'We really do miss you, you know,' Hannah began as she strolled beside him, 'So does Mom. She called you three times today just to check that you were still coming to this thing and hadn't cancelled on us again.'

Leon sighed and brushed his hair from his brow, 'I know and I'm sorry. I've missed home too. I expected everything to settle down after I started my new job but now I'm busier than ever. I should've guessed it would end up like that.'

'I'll let you off this time. Since having Nathan I've been putting off going back to UCLA. But Professor Quinn has told me that I can come back whenever I'm ready.'

Hannah laced her fingers in front of her stomach and stared out towards the distant spot of the main city limits. She was training to be an English teacher. In this dream Nathan's birth had obviously put that on hold. Her husband Matt was a man cut from a pretty starched and traditional cloth, so her being a working mother would make him intensely uncomfortable.

'He's almost two years old now,' Leon smiled encouragingly, 'And Mom loves having him around. She'd be head over heels to babysit him. You're so good at what you do Hannah. You can work something out right? Maybe part-time?'

She shook her head, her hair tumbling over her shoulders in waves of chocolate brown, 'Now just isn't the right time. I don't want to miss anything. I feel as though I should be at home with my son right now. He needs me. They both do.'

Leon stared at her, hunting for any tell tale frown or wavering of eye contact but she seemed honest enough, 'I can understand. He's a really sweet kid. And he reminds me of Dad. It's eerie. All he needs to do is throw on a little soldier's outfit and tell me to clean up my room.'

'You think so?' Hannah practically glowed, 'I'm glad. I know I don't have as many memories of Dad as you do. Come to think of it I have none. But it felt right to call him that the moment he was born and I didn't want to waste time second guessing myself. So I talked Matt around to naming him after Daddy.'

'I think Dad would have approved,' Leon nodded thoughtfully, 'Scratch that. He would have loved it.'

'Mom was a little disappointed. She loves Nate to pieces, but she's always wanted a granddaughter. And I don't plan on having another kid for a few years at least. Matt and I want to keep things as simple as possible.'

'Yeah. Well things don't get much simpler than Matt.'

Hannah swatted at his arm and Leon ducked out of the way laughing. They came to a stop by the tree furthest from the house. It was the shorter of the two but it was also the widest and the most robust. It had survived gale force winds that had toppled houses. It was also Leon's favourite because in its branches it cupped a tree house of monumental simplicity. It was a large horizontal plane of wood that could hold four people. It had three walls with small, square windows carved into them. Half of it was shielded by a small roof of thinner board that was painted green and stood out against the burnt-red blaze of the autumn leaves. There was no ladder or rope to climb to the top. Instead there was a secret series of grooves and knots that were a natural part of the trunk's ancient face. Leon had built this at age thirteen with his stepfather.

Since Hannah had had so few memories of their real dad, she'd taken the most easily to Alan when he had come into their mother's life. Moira had met Alan through a mutual friend who had invited them both to a charity lunch in New York and things had spiralled from there. He'd been everything she'd wanted. Secure, sensible, sincere and single. They'd married within the year and Leon had had one hell of a time adjusting to the speed at which 'Hurricane Alan' had torn through his life.

For a long while he'd managed to guard himself from Alan's carefully laid out strategies to connect with him; from a ride in his Porsche to ringside seats at sports games. It had been easy to resist the offers themselves and Leon had been too proud to feel guilty about it. He'd been defending the past from the present by standing up for his father's memory, or so he'd told himself until the age of twelve when he'd begun to feel like an outsider in his own home.

Then one of their neighbours had demolished an old shed and Leon had asked if he could keep the wood to build a tree house. He'd had a highly inflated sense of his own woodworking abilities but a nasty encounter between his hammer and his thumb had shattered that illusion as well as a couple of his bones. Alan had offered to help and Leon had sulkily agreed. The result had been the tree house, his fortress and hideaway, a place the local kids still played in today. It had taken a month to complete and though Leon could never bring himself to call Alan 'Dad', he'd finally accepted the change in his life that had happened years before. Now the two got on well, though they'd never be as close as either of them were with Hannah.

Leon lowered himself to the grass beside the tree and rested his forearms on his knees. Hannah followed him, taking off her pale blue jacket and rolling it into a ball, before lying down and using it as a pillow. They stayed there in silence squinting at the horizon and counting the clouds for a while like they used to do as kids.

'So....Ada,' Hannah spoke up suddenly, 'She's a very interesting woman.'

'"Interesting"?' Leon asked leaning back against the tree trunk and loosening his tie, 'What does _that_ mean?'

She shrugged, 'She's very quiet and composed. That's all I meant. She isn't like the other girlfriends you've had...She is your girlfriend right?'

Leon dodged the question, 'What was wrong with my other girlfriends? You didn't even meet most of them.'

'Exactly. If they were so great you would have introduced them to us.'

He shot her a half-grin, 'I didn't want to scare them away.'

Hannah made a rude gesture at him with her hand.

'You didn't answer my question,' she pestered him relentlessly, 'Is she your girlfriend? Your friend? Paid escort?'

'Oh bite me, Hannah.'

'Come on!' she threw her head back against the grass and laughed at him, 'I wouldn't ask if I didn't want to know more about the woman who seems to adore my big brother.'

A cleft formed between his eyebrows as he held his sister's steady gaze, 'Are you still taking the piss out of me?'

He knew that Ada cared about him enough to watch his back, which was saying a lot when you took her past and her lifestyle into account. There was a friction between them; hot bursts of sensuality when they touched. But beyond that he wasn't sure he could afford to know.

Hannah turned her face in a vague direction towards him but she kept her eyes on the land ahead, 'Leon... I've gotta ask...'

He looked down at her, 'What is it Han?'

'Ada doesn't work at an art gallery does she? I mean...she knows a lot about art and she sure looks classy enough to work in one. But I don't think she's an art dealer and I don't think you met her at a gallery function.'

'Why not?'

'Come on Leon. When was the last time _you_ went to an art gallery?'

'Are you trying to say that I'm not cultured?'

Hannah rolled her eyes and smiled, 'Call it instinct. Granted I can't put my finger on it, but Ada just seems like the type that doesn't stay in one place for too long.'

Leon pressed his lips together and glanced away. The impulse to lie and cover for Ada was instinctual but he decided not to. Even in a dream, his sister was too perceptive for that, 'You're right. She works with the government.'

'How long have you known her?'

'A few days...spaced out over several years.'

She glanced at him, her expression straight and unnaturally even. She didn't know if he was being serious or simply teasing her like he'd done several times before, 'And what do you know about her? I mean...you brought her here so it's got to mean something right?'

_Yeah, I just wish I knew what exactly._

Leon paused and reached down to the ground to tease a few strands of wild grass around his fingers. He ripped them from the soil and let them fall back to the earth one by one, 'Ada has saved my life more than once. I don't know what to make of her. She's passionate, unpredictable and she challenges me every second I'm around her. I can think of a hundred reasons to walk away but...I can't do it.'

He expected his sister to spout another observation, to justify his fears or to conjure up a solution. But she seemed as confused as he was.

'I really hope she doesn't hurt you,' she murmured.

Leon looked back towards the house and nodded slowly, 'Me too.'

They said nothing else for quite a while. Each had something to think about, but the sun was making them lazy, hot and sluggish. They watched the sun descend in silence until their mother found them both half-asleep on the grass.

'There you two are,' she came to a stop in front of the pair, 'I should have known you'd be here. I couldn't tear either of you away from this place during your teens. You even used to fight over it.'

Hannah blinked up at their Mom cheekily, 'Well hello Mommy dearest. I promise that no fists have being flying at this end of the garden. Is Nathan up?'

'Yes Honey, for about ten minutes now. He's fine,' Moira replied, a soft lilt to her voice.

'I guess that's my cue,' Hannah grunted as she rose to her feet and dusted off her suit, 'I'll go and check up on him. He's probably hungry and I don't want Aunt Sarah to start feeding him Oreos again. I've only just weaned him off MNMs.'

Leon stood and gave her a quick wave as she began the short walk back to the house. Instead of following, Moira stood beside her son with a measured look on her smooth face. Her dark orange dress hissed as she moved, the gauzy fabric absorbing the sun. She stared at Leon for a few seconds and then lifted her hand to his forehead and stroked his hair. It was her way of telling him that he needed a haircut. He took her hand and gave it a swift squeeze before letting it drop to her side.

'How are things?' she asked, 'You haven't called home much recently.'

'Work has been keeping me busy.'

There was still no reaction from her except a slight tilt of her head, 'I wish you'd learn to prioritise. You work far too hard,' she added as an afterthought, 'And you're growing up so fast.'

He smirked and rubbed his sore eyes, 'But not fast enough?'

Moira's grey eyes smouldered like ash, 'I didn't come here for an argument Leon. I came to see how my son is.'

'I know, Mom. I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by that.'

She folded her slender arms and her icy glare melted a little, 'I know Sweetheart. I'm going back to the house. Are you coming?'

Leon shook his head, 'I'll stay out here for a little while longer, if that's okay.'

His mother gave a tiny nod and turned away. Her footsteps were steady as she swept across the lawn and back to their home.

The house in LA was another world compared to that half-derelict apartment in New York. It hadn't transformed his mother, but it had fed a part of her that had been starved for so long. She liked being the lady of the house and she loved being able to provide for her family, opening doors into a world of opportunity and security that she had spent over half of her life excluded from. She'd hoped that Leon would take up Alan's offer of working in the law firm after his graduation. But he had opted out of a law degree and applied to the Police Academy and in the process he'd brought back memories of their 'blue collar past'. Moira had been relieved and proud when he'd broken the news of his job offer from the government. But the gravity of his responsibilities and the fact that he was trained to leap in front of a bullet had sobered her quickly.

Leon cushioned his head against the tree trunk and watched his imaginary day come to an end. It was the early evening now and the best time to be out there. Bands of angry colour looped across the sky. Narrow stripes of pink clashed with orange and dark blue. Clouds mirrored the sun and were scattered like hot tears. The heat made him sweat until the collar of his shirt stuck to his neck like duct-tape. Closing his eyes, he breathed in the perfume of the evening. Finally, he tipped his head back and lifted the hair from his eyes so that he could see the highest reaches of the tree. For a handful of seconds he stared through the dark branches and the brittle leaves, and then he smiled.

Bracing himself, he clutched hold of small lump of bark that bulged out from the trunk of the tree. He pressed his foot against one of the chunky, protruding roots and hauled himself upwards. The bark felt like cold rubber against his palms, flaking off in tiny splinters when his fingertips dug into it for support. Locking his arms around one of the thickest branches halfway up the tree, Leon wondered if it was his sensible loafers that were making the climb harder than usual or if it was the dizzying affect of the dream, making all sensations, even vertigo, stronger. Or perhaps he was just out of practice. The route returned to him like a book he'd memorised as a child. His hands and feet moved before his mind registered the locations of each hand and foothold. He bounced a little, swinging his legs over the top in a practiced manoeuvre that had hurt a lot less when he'd been fourteen.

When he reached to the top he spotted a long pair of denim-clad legs in the corner of the tree house. A tall man with fair hair speckled with sooty grey, his big back hunched and his head tucked low towards his chest, gazed out in the direction of the house where Moira had returned to entertain her guests.

'Sometimes I forget how beautiful she is. Or maybe I don't want to remember,' he gave a sigh deep enough to blow the clouds from the sky.

Leon sat down on the main platform and dangled his left leg off the edge, his heel digging into the bark, 'I'd wondered when you'd show up. I think you're the only member of my immediate family that I haven't seen so far.'

Nathan Kennedy pressed his shoulder against the wooden wall and crossed his legs at the ankles. He stared longingly through the small porthole in the wall for a few moments more. Then he turned back, blinked rapidly and wrapped his muscular arms around his chest. He smiled sheepishly, ruffling his short hair with his large hands as if he wanted desperately to wake himself up. He was in a light green sweater and frayed worker's jeans, the end of his thick boots scuffing dirt into the wooden boards. The setting sun licked at his cropped, sooty-blond hair and rubbed some colour into his usually wan cheeks.

Leon ducked his head forward to catch Nathan's line of sight, 'You okay?'

His eyes became wide and alert as he forced an ungainly smile onto his face, 'Of course, Son. I'm fine...I...' his grin softened and lines of amusement formed around his eyes, 'You know, I should be the one asking you that, not the other way around. Typical. Some guide huh?'

Leon shrugged, 'You're not so bad. It could be worse. It could have been Grandpa Mac instead.'

Hal 'Mac' McKenzie had been Leon's grandfather on his mother's side and had died when Leon was eight. He'd lived under a powerful and outdated tradition of machismo and it'd always scared the hell out of his grandson. Shortly after his seventh birthday Leon had badly sprained his wrist under Hal's care. But his granddad had refused to call an ambulance until Leon had stopped crying because apparently 'Pain teaches you to be a man and you can't learn nothing if you're too busy crying like a baby.'

Nathan chuckled remembering his stubborn father-in-law, 'You dodged a bullet there Son. This neighbourhood...it's a nice place. Very nice. If I could have chosen anywhere for you and Hannah to grow up, I would have picked a place like this.'

Resting his head against the tree trunk, Leon nodded, 'We were lucky to have this house. Mom really loves her garden. It's like her third child. She kicks ass every summer at the flower arranging conventions in Santa Barbara.'

'Ah. Yeah. It was one of the reasons she loathed the apartment in New York. "There's no green, no colour and nothing ever grows. There's nowhere for the kids to play." That's what she used to say to me,' Nathan paused before asking reluctantly, 'Does he make her happy?'

'Alan?' Leon replied reluctantly, 'I suppose so. He does. He seems henpecked, the way he puts up with so much from her. But he keeps her grounded and she needs that. He's a good guy.'

He paused, his fingers digging into the wooden floorboards, 'What happened between you and Mom?' he asked softly, 'I always thought that everything had been okay until you died but it wasn't. In one of my dreams I remembered...fighting. Lots of fighting. It was one of the reasons that you'd left that night wasn't it? Because you and Mom...'

Groaning deeply, Nathan rolled his shoulders and pushed away from the wall, 'You know better than that Leon. This isn't about me. All of this is about _you_, and your problem. Surely there are more important things that you can ask me right now!'

'I think the state of my childhood is important and you're a part of that,' Leon replied impatiently, 'Stop acting as though you're on some lofty perch in the clouds looking down on me because that's not how it is.'

'Then how is it exactly?'

'How is it?' Leon echoed incredulously as he swung his legs onto the tree house floor and stood up, 'I carry you on my shoulders every day and I have since I was five years old. I did it because I thought that I was so lousy as a son that you had decided to die and leave us. Even though I soon realised that bleeding to death from a knife to the gut isn't something that a person can just jump back from, by then I was too used to clinging to you. So fucking enlighten me Dad. What went wrong?'

Nathan cocked his head to one side and shrugged one shoulder. Then he reached up and whacked his hand against Leon's ear.

'Jesus!' Leon ducked out of the way, rubbing the sore spot on the side of his head, 'What the hell was that for?'

'For you to watch your damn language.'

He stared at his father incredulously, his eyebrows twitching as if he didn't know what to do with his face. Then he coughed up a short laugh and shook his head, turning away.

Nathan stroked his stubble-dusted chin to hide a dark smile, 'Leon...It wasn't your fault. How you could have even thought that is beyond me.'

'Then tell me otherwise, or I'll throw myself off the top of this tree,' he patted one of the protruding branches with his left hand, 'and I'll wake up back at the President's dinner party or in the emergency room. Either way I'll be awake again. There'll be no more dreams for at least another forty eight hours. Seventy two if I stay caffeinated.'

'Then you'd be an idiot,' his father replied resolutely, 'You'll miss out on seeing the people you love. You'll miss out on Ada.'

'That's not Ada.'

'Don't be so sure,' Nathan looked up, seeming almost alive again with a smile that rivalled the afternoon lightshow in the sky, 'If this was just a daydream then I think you could conjure up a more exciting place to be than at one of your mother's social events. Give yourself a little credit.'

Leon slid to the floor, the back of his shirt riding up against the wall as he sat, 'Okay. But that could just mean that I'm a natural masochist. You didn't answer my question. What happened with Mom? What went wrong?'

His father joined him on the floor of the wooden fortress and rocked back slightly, bracing his forearms against the ground and stretching is long legs out in front of him, 'Nothing went wrong exactly. Not in the classical sense. Our marriage meant that we got you and we got Hannah. Nothing went wrong there,' he sniffed the air and rubbed his tongue against his dry lips as he glanced back towards the house, 'Your Mom and I grew apart, but I don't need to tell you that. You heard every argument, every fight and every ugly word. And even though you can't recall them I know that deep down you haven't forgotten. I'm sorry.'

His father was right; he didn't consciously remember the fighting. But there were times when the tiniest morsel of recognition would nourish his memory whenever he got angry and raised his voice or felt his blood boiling and drumming against his veins. A sour cocktail of fury, fear, revulsion and guilt. He didn't remember the arguing but he remembered the way it felt to hear it. He rarely got truly angry anymore or experienced the kind of rage that a smart remark or a sarcastic wisecrack couldn't dissipate. But on the occasions that it did happen, a part of him would stir up that series of incoherent and disjointed emotions from his childhood. It made him loathed himself.

'I was a lieutenant in the US army when I met your Mom,' Nathan continued almost wistfully as if he didn't think anyone was listening to him, 'There was this stupid event...a sort of holiday ball at the hall downtown and a few of us were ordered to go down and make a good showing for Uncle Sam, maybe recruit a few people while we were down there. Now I wasn't in the mood to go down because I'd just received one hell of a 'Dear John' letter from a lady friend and I was lousy company. But I went anyway because it was my job. I arrived early thinking the sooner I arrived, the sooner I could leave. Anyway, that's where I met her.'

He paused but Leon was able to fill in the gaps having heard the story already from his Aunt Sarah who had always been a fan of her sister's first husband, 'I know. She was arranging the flowers for the event. It was after she'd graduated from high school and she was training to be a florist.'

Nathan nodded and smiled back at him, 'The flower arrangements were damn impressive. It was like spring itself had sneezed all over the ballroom. She was wearing a pale green dress that was a size too big for her. She kept tripping over the hem all night but she had this amazing presence. In the middle of all the chaos of the event she was in control. After my second drink, I drummed up the courage to ask her to dance but she said no. She was too busy apparently.'

_Sounds familiar. Mom never takes a break until the job's done._

'So I lost my nerve and spent the entire night watching her from the back of the hall. After a few days of stewing in my room, I decided to suck it up, be a man and ask again. So...' he laughed suddenly and rolled his eyes, 'I found out the address of the place she worked and I went in to ask her to dinner. Each and every time I ended up losing my nerve and leaving. But I couldn't leave empty handed, oh no. By the end of the week I'd bought five bouquets of roses, a dozen lilies and a cactus.'

'Smooth.'

'Hey! I got the date eventually of course. Slow and steady wins the race,' his father grunted as rolled his broad shoulders and dusted the dirt from his palms, 'I don't know if your mom was my soul mate but she was the closest I ever got. She could floor me with a single look. We'd been dating on and off for a couple of years when she got pregnant with you. I was in Cuba when I got her letter,' he shook his head, recollecting disbelief, excitement and apprehension, 'That was one heck of a Christmas card to get! I don't think I strung together more than a few words for the rest of that day. My superior caught me in dreamland during my guard duty and he made me run thirty laps of the compound before lights out. I managed to get leave after I was injured when one of our trucks crashed into an instillation. I was able to get home before you were born.'

Leon folded his arms and rested them against his upturned knees. He shifted slightly as his thighs went to sleep from being held in such a tight position, but he didn't dare move too much. He wanted to hear the story that was gradually, before his eyes, turning his father from a ghost into a human being.

'Then what?' he asked hoarsely.

'Then your mother bought the biggest wedding dress she could get her hands on just to hide the bump. She hated that damn dress and she cried so hard when her hands swelled and her wedding ring didn't fit. She had to wear mine for the rest of the pregnancy and I wore hers on my pinky finger.'

Leon grinned, 'I never knew that. Mom didn't...she doesn't...'

'Doesn't talk about me?' Nathan concluded with a dull sense of finality.

His son's smile withered, 'Yeah. It's hard for her to talk about it, that's all. It's not like she's forgotten about you.'

'Yeah. Your mom never forgets anything. She's like some kind of super computer,' Nathan looked up into Leon's eyes, 'After your sister was born things crumbled. Your mom was too busy, I was too busy and there was this crater between us. I became too comfortable to notice that we'd both grown to want different things. It got worse after my injury and discharge from the army. I couldn't make money. I couldn't do anything for any of you. There is nothing that makes a man feel as useless as when he can't look after the people he loves.'

'And the drinking?'

'Do you need an excuse for that too?'

'I'm curious,' Leon replied, pleased that he sounded as non-judgemental as he felt, 'I don't remember Mom ever keeping alcohol in the house unless she was having people over for dinner. Was she always like that or is it because of what happened?'

'Moira didn't know where I really went at night. She thought that I'd gotten a night job guarding a paper factory downtown. She was never fond of alcohol but she wasn't tee-total either. Still, I kept my drinking a secret. I hid liquor in my gun closet...not my smartest move but...' his father took a deep, throaty breath and looked away, 'I really didn't think it'd hurt anyone. There were times when I genuinely thought that she could..._smell_ it on me or she'd seen me drinking in the early hours. But she'd never say anything. Even when we argued she never brought it up.'

Leon watched his father intently but every now and then his gaze would waver as if he was staring into the face of the sun rather than into his father's reddened eyes and pasty complexion. But something suddenly occurred to him, 'If you didn't have a night job at the factory then what did you do for money?'

Nathan slowly glanced up at Leon but his line of sight got stuck somewhere between his son's chest and chin. He cleared his throat, the rough choking sound made the thick walls of the tree house rattle. Leon frowned, the muscles in his neck tensing and making it difficult to breathe. He parted his lips to ask again, deciding that the answer had to be worth overpowering the fierce dread that was currently holding him hostage.

'Leon!' an insistent cry drew his eyes away from his father.

He leaned over the edge and looked down before remembering how extreme the sense of distance was within this dream. The height combined with the view that stretched for miles almost made him gag. It was like a wild fairground ride that had come to a sudden stop. Leon braced his arms against the branches of the tree. He gave his head a hard shake and looked down towards the roots of the wooden colossus.

She stood at the base of the tree looking up at him with her hands cupped behind her back. Her dress fluttered in the gathering breeze, beating against her long, pale legs and rippling around her body. Her cheeks were tinted pink from a day in the sun.

'Ada,' a frail smile tugging at his stiff mouth, 'Hey.'

'You've become a stranger in your own home, Handsome. Your family is wondering where you are,' she said, her voice competing against the growing noise of the wind and winning effortlessly, 'I said that I'd come and retrieve you.'

'Mission accomplished,' Leon replied, taking a deep breath, 'I'm sorry for taking so long. I'm all right. Tell them I'll be down in a minute.'

He looked back at the corner of the tree house to find the spot his father had sat in was empty. Staring at the wall for a few moments he heaved a sigh.

_Damn. Come on Dad, don't be a coward._

Down at ground level Ada remained beside the tree despite his subtle dismissal, 'Who were you talking to just now?'

Glancing back at her Leon groped desperately for an answer that wouldn't make him sound like a crazy person. But he decided to do a little experiment and see how this fantasy....this woman of his dreams would react.

'I was talking to my father,' he replied clearly and carefully.

Ada gazed up at him, her expression was soft and steady. She didn't attempt to make fun of him or make a dismissive remark.

'He died when you were young didn't he?' she asked flatly.

Leon nodded, 'Yeah. When I was five. How did you...?'

'I've read and written dozens of reports about you over the years including historical profiles. I know your mother's maiden name, the place and date you were born, your father's unit in the army, the name of your prom date and all of your grades at school. I was particularly impressed with your consistent high achievement in home economics,' she replied candidly, her dark eyes never leaving his.

Leon gaped at her, his jaw slack and his breathing shallow, 'You were pretty thorough.'

'It's my job to be thorough. Besides,' she added glancing away, 'the subject matter was stimulating enough.'

He took a moment to suppress his grin; pride came before a fall and there was a long drop from here, 'Do you want to come up?' he lifted his hand and swept it along the boundless expanse of the sky, 'It's like another world up here.'

She looked up at the sharp, brown branches, raising her eyebrow disdainfully, 'Really?'

He gave another short laugh at her honest confusion, 'You don't believe me? Come up here and take a look.'

Ada's deep jade eyes widened.

The seconds dragged by and he realised that he wanted her up there with him more than he wanted anything else, 'It's safe and I know you're not afraid of heights. I'll help you.'

She sighed like an adult driven to distraction by a small child, but she kicked off her red shoes nonetheless and approached the trunk. Carefully, she raised her hand to the side of the tree and dug her fingers into a small dent a few metres off the ground.

'Wait,' Leon called as he watched her, 'That's not the one. Try to your right...that lump in the bark a few inches above your hand. Use that. Don't worry. It holds for me so it'll be no problem for you.'

She glanced back up at him through the loose locks of her dark hair and he caught a flash of scepticism.

'Trust me,' he said evenly, 'There's a foothold on the largest root right there. Just push off and grab that first thick branch above you...that's it. That's the one.'

Leon stood and grabbed Ada's arm as she scaled the final metre of the tree house. Her strong hands gripped his wrist and she grunted softly, shuffling across to stand beside him. She smelt like late summer; hot, sweaty and human.

'You know what?' he told her in amazement, 'You're the first girl I've ever invited up here.'

She dusted off her hands, her cheeks pink from the effort of the climb, 'What about your sister?'

'Hannah's been up here, but I've never actually _invited_ her. She'd usually just sneak up here to bug me.'

'Then I suppose I should be flattered,' Ada replied with a feathered purr, that tickled the base of his stomach.

He motioned her towards the southern wall of the structure. Then he pointed out of the small window and through the large gap in the branches.

'Look,' he gestured beyond the edge of the grounds towards the dying lights of the cityscape, 'About a mile in that direction is my old school. Just behind it there's the basketball court. And to the right are the old church and the shopping mall. I can see almost the whole town from here.'

The horizon was like a timeline of his life and he wanted to share it with her. His schools, his favourite ice cream parlour, the park where he'd taught Hannah to ride her bike: it was all there.

Ada straightened the front of her dress. Her shoulder pressed against his as she arched over to follow his directions, 'It's a charming view. The place could use a spring clean though.'

'The maid's on vacation,' Leon rested his hands on the edge of the small window, 'Is everything all right back there? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to leave you...'

She leaned against the wall, her small, pink toes pressing delicately onto the smooth floor, 'I'm fine. There's nothing's wrong.'

'You've been quiet all day and you've barely eaten,' he said casually, trying not to rouse her defences by sounding critical, 'If you want to leave early then I understand.'

'You have a beautiful home Leon,' she replied sounding almost fond of the place, 'I don't want to leave yet.'

Ada tipped her head to glance down towards the grass, 'So, you spent time up here as a child when you were feeling unhappy?' her soft, green eyes focused on his, 'Why are you up here now?'

Leon turned away from the window, 'Give me a zombie-infested island and I'm good to go. But in a room full of relatives and friends making polite conversation over fruit punch I'm lost. When did I forget how to be normal?'

'Normal's overrated,' she replied, her gaze washing over his face like water bleeding through the cracks of his sombre mood.

'I've been thinking about my dad a lot recently,' he tapped his fingers over the ledge of the window, 'I've been trying to reconcile what I know about him and what I'm gradually finding out. It's complicated.'

Ada took a small step closer until they were standing side by side. She observed the rich sea of orange and pink that stretched above them, 'I understand.'

He paused, digesting the tone of her voice; it was rich with disappointment.

'Who was it?' he asked gently, 'Mom or Dad?'

'Both,' she replied so quietly that he could barely hear her and had to lean closer until their heads were almost touching.

'I'm sorry.'

Ada smiled ruefully before backing away, 'Don't be. I don't know who my father was. My mother probably didn't know him very well either. She was...troubled,' she continued frowning as if the words were constantly eluding her, 'They called her manic depressive and schizophrenic but I think that she was just heartbroken. I suppose there's no scientific term for that so the doctors didn't know what else to say. People took advantage of her for a long time.'

'And you too?'

'No. Not anymore.'

Her delivery was cold and detached. He'd expected as much before she'd even opened her mouth. But he was only half listening to the words. His greater energies were directed on her beautiful face and the deep-rooted storm of regret and hurt in her eyes as she looked at him. Her lips quivered as if she wanted to look him in the eye but didn't have the strength. Leon ached for her, his heart willing to submerge itself inside of her chest to fill the missing piece that had been taken from her years ago.

_No wonder you didn't want to answer any of Sarah's questions._

Reaching over, Leon covered her hand in his and she didn't pull away. Her cool fingers wrapped hesitantly around his palm and she pressed her ruby lips together as though toying with a difficult decision. She moved closer, keeping her wide, soulful eyes squared on his chest.

'We should get back your family,' she suggested, her voice sounding distant to him.

He had only one coherent thought and it stuck out like a rose in the desert. He wanted to kiss her. It had started out as a distant wish, and then it became a deep longing until finally escalating into a desperate scream. And he half-suspected that she'd let him do it and that she'd kiss him back with the same passion, precision and grace that she invested in everything else she did. But now just wasn't the right time.

'Okay,' he replied as she dropped his hand like a discarded handkerchief.

The loss of her skin against his was jarring, leaving him cold. Leon clenched his fist to get rid of the imprint of her fingers into his palm.

_I'm in a tree house, holding hands with a girl and blushing. I'm twelve years old all of a sudden._

Ada stared coolly at the opposite wall, her hand balanced on the gentle slope of her hip. She didn't seem embarrassed. She didn't even seem to remember what had just happened and what she'd just told him. It was like she'd flicked the remote on her emotions and left him submerged in the leftover static.

'I never thanked you,' she declared suddenly.

'For what?'

'For distracting your Aunt from asking me anymore questions about my past. It obviously wouldn't have made appealing dinner conversation. I didn't want you to think that I was being rude to her.'

'I understand.'

Ada nodded and peered back over the edge of the tree house. She was planning her escape route. But selfishly he didn't want to let her take it.

'Do you know any good jokes?'

'A joke?'

'Yeah. A joke. Do you know any good ones?'

Biting her lush, red bottom lip, she stared back at him in silence just to keep him on edge and it was working. He could feel a chill like a current flowing through him and making his bones shiver.

'What's the difference between a lawyer and God?' she asked him, tilting her head to one side making locks of lustrous black hair fall over her cheek.

'I don't know. Care to tell me?' he replied huskily.

'God doesn't think he's a lawyer.'

Leon shook his head and began to chuckle, 'That was terrible.'

Ada gasped, stepped forwards and kicked him hard in shin making him laugh even louder, 'If you think you could do any better then I'm all ears.'

'Fine. Why don't sharks attack lawyers?'

'I have no idea.'

'Professional courtesy.'

'Oh that's even worse than mine,' she rolled her eyes, 'You're lucky you're good looking.'

Leon's grin was electric. Ada remained poised like an exquisite china doll in the corner of his tree house. She seemed so grownup and sophisticated against the rough and careworn edges of his childhood fortress and she filled the space magnificently, like a red robin in her nest. He'd sat next to this woman for what had felt like hours during this little fantasy of his, but now was the first time that he genuinely recognised her as the Ada he knew: brave, beautiful and complicated.

They stayed that way for a while, laughing over tired jokes. Leon couldn't help baiting her once or twice, pushing the limits of her good humour. The past few days had worn him down to the bone and he found it harder to stay formal with her.

'We should be getting back before they send out another search party,' Ada insisted once again.

He agreed and slowly lowered himself out of the tree house. The leaves rustled as he brushed past them before letting go and dropping the last few feet to the floor. Staring up through the thick canopy of green and red, he saw Ada edging confidently out of the structure. Locking her bare feet in the V-shaped nook where two branches met, she clambered down the trunk.

When she was within reach Leon braced his hands around her slender waist and lowered her to the grass. She turned in his arms, the silk of her dress sighing as it brushed against the thick cotton of his jeans. The peppery scent of her skin stirred within the depths of his mouth making it water. Ada watched him, her lashes beating a steady tempo. The dark hazel lining of her eyes smouldered as her lips twitched into a tiny smile of triumph. He was attuned to her breathing alone, his own chest losing its steady rhythm of in and out until he was breathless and dizzy. Slowly, she lifted her hand to his chest and gently patted him before breaking away from his loose embrace and bending down to retrieve her shoes.

Leon wiped his moist brow with the cuff of his sleeve and offered her his arm. Ada cupped his elbow and they walked in a comfortable silence back to the house. When they arrived most of Moira and Alan's colleagues had left. The smouldering barbeque had been hidden away for the evening and the other guests were sipping coffee in the conservatory. Moira sat beside Hannah and Matt. Baby Nathan was gurgling happily on his mother's lap. Alan was still buried in his copy of the LA Times and Matt was whispering intently into his cell phone. Aunt Sarah was in a tall wicker chair and in the other seats the remaining guests were in secluded nooks engaging in discrete pockets of conversation.

Leon spotted his mother casting a guarded look in their direction. He tried to catch her eye but she didn't see him. She was looking at Ada. Leon frowned and squeezed Ada's hand. He led her to a seat beside his aunt, who was chatting animatedly to Hannah.

'Oh so she smoked you out Kiddo!' Sarah raised her glass so quickly that droplets of white wine splashed onto her dress, 'I knew she'd be the only one of us who could tempt you back in here.'

Ada raised one of her elegantly shaped eyebrows but remained silent. Leon smiled blandly at his aunt, willing her to return to her story. But Sarah was totally oblivious after more than a glass and a half of wine.

'You needn't have come back on our account if you kids wanted to be alone,' she gave him a gawky wink, which made Leon want to bury his head in his hands. His aunt was drunk. It was his High School graduation all over again.

'I'm going to get some more coffee,' Moira announced abruptly and began to gather the empty cups in her hands. She piled them haphazardly onto a silver tray as though she couldn't wait to be out of the room.

Ada rose from the chair, 'That looks heavy. Do you need any help?'

'You're a guest,' Moira kept her cloudy grey eyes on the fragile china, 'Don't trouble yourself.'

'It's no trouble. And believe me I won't break anything.'

His mother paused before replying insipidly, 'Thank you.'

She turned and marched swiftly out of the room and Ada, taking long, graceful strides, followed closely behind without giving Leon another look. He watched them leave and felt apprehensive and a little sick to the stomach.

As Sarah turned to ask Hannah about the preschool she was planning to send Nathan to, Leon quietly slid from his seat and left the room. He followed the long hallway through the ground floor of the house and entered the artfully beige dinning room next door to the kitchen. He could hear the gentle clink of cups and saucers and the bubbling of the kettle, but the absence of conversation made him nervous. Leon stopped by the closed door, leaned back against the wall and listened.

'I'd like to thank you again for having me over,' Ada's voice was polished and confident.

Leon heard a cupboard slam shut as his mother stiffly replied, 'Well it's not every day that my son deigns to introduce me to his friends.'

'He leads a complicated life.'

'So he tells me...often. Exactly how much do you know about it Miss Wong?'

'Please, I insist that you call me Ada.'

Moira remained mute as she twisted the taps and poured water into the kettle.

Ada sounded unfazed as she continued to feed life into their diluted conversation, 'We work together if that's what you mean.'

'And that's all?'

'Yes. Your point?' she bit out the question impatiently.

'How well do you know my son?' his mother demanded in the same neutral tone she used when asking someone to pass the salt.

'I've known him for many years, on and off.'

'I didn't ask how _long_ you've known him,' Moira corrected her, 'I asked how _well _you know him.'

Leon rubbed his palm wearily over his face and rested the back of his head against the wall.

_I don't believe this._

'I'd like to think that I know him well,' Ada replied warily.

There was silence as kettle simmered to a stop.

Finally his mother continued, 'You're obviously an astute woman Miss Wong so I won't insult your intelligence even though you insist on insulting mine.'

'If I've done something to upset you-.' Ada interrupted but Moira carried on over her.

'Let me tell you exactly what you know about my son. He's a giver. He's always been that way, even when he was very young. That's not something he tries to hide and there are people that are ready to take advantage of that. I know that kind of opportunist intimately and I see it whenever I look at you. I know exactly the type of woman you are. You're beautiful, manipulative and you're used to getting what you want.'

'I'm impressed. And when did you figure this out?' Ada asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm and barely suppressed rage, 'The moment you laid eyes on me? Or perhaps the second your son told you I was coming over?'

'You think I'm imagining it?'

'It's only natural to be protective of the people you love, especially when there's no need.'

'Then prove me wrong,' his mother challenged her boldly, 'Look me in the eye and tell me that the thought of using my son and squeezing him dry of everything he has, has never crossed your mind. Tell me that the idea of using him isn't appealing to you. Tell me that your fingers don't twitch at the very idea of that opportunity and that it doesn't exhilarate that deep part of you that you're pretending doesn't exist.'

Either Ada chose not to answer or she found that she simply couldn't.

'I thought so,' Moira replied sounding faintly disappointed in her, 'You're not good enough for Leon. You can barely look him in the eye when you're here. My son is not your prey. If you cared for him half as much as you pretend to then you'd leave him alone.'

Pushing off the wall, Leon grabbed the handle and threw the door open. But as the doorframe struck the wall behind it, another door at the far end of the kitchen slammed shut. He found his mother facing him from the centre aisle of the kitchen beside a freshly made tray of coffee and cake. Ada was gone.

Moira straightened the long sleeves of her orange dress and eyed him reproachfully, 'I thought I brought you up well enough to know not to eavesdrop.'

'Stop it,' he growled as he tore out of the kitchen and through the side door.

He emerged in the short alleyway beside the house just in time to hear the rumble of a car engine as it backed away from the front drive. Leon reached to the front of the house and found Ada's red convertible edging off the sidewalk. He ran towards the car, stopping at the driver's side. He reached over and twisted the keys in the ignition, bringing the purring engine to a stop.

Ada scowled at him, 'What are you doing?'

'I might ask you the same thing,' he replied between shallow breaths, 'Are you going without saying goodbye?'

'Fine,' she folded her arms calmly over the steering wheel, 'Goodbye Leon. Did that do?'

'No. Not good enough,' he frowned at her and plucked the keys from the ignition, 'You can at least say goodbye to Sarah and Hannah.'

'They'll live without it,' she replied tartly.

'Maybe, but I don't want you to leave.'

'Your mother has made it clear that I'm not welcome and I don't make a habit of hanging around for long when that's the case. Call it a survival instinct. Now give me the damn keys!'

His lips curling with irritation, Leon tossed the keys onto her lap, 'When it comes to choosing my friends I stopped needing permission from my mom many, many years ago.'

'I want to go.'

'No you don't. You may have been skittish all day but there were times when you were really enjoying yourself. I could see it.'

Ada rolled her eyes towards the windscreen, 'Did you expect it to last?'

'Are you kidding? I didn't even expect it to _start_.'

Despite her frustration, she gave him a bleak smile, 'That makes two of us.'

He stood back, keeping his hands on the car door, 'If you don't want to go back in there then that's okay, but the least you can do is take me with you.'

She shot him a curious glance, 'What?'

'Just wait here until I get back. Please.'

She hesitated, running the tip of her tongue over her lip, 'If you insist.'

'I mean it Ada.'

'What? Do you want to take the keys away again?'

'I'm considering it.'

Ada sighed and let her hands fall from the wheel, 'Just hurry up.'

Leon turned away from her and returned to the house. Entering the main hall, he quickly found his jacket hanging up beside the gilded mirror. He shoved his arms into it and was about to leave when he caught his mother hovering at the end of the hall.

'Leon,' she began sternly.

'Don't start with me Mom,' he shook his head dejectedly and busied himself with his coat buttons to avoid looking at her, 'What possessed you to say a thing like that to her?'

'Don't question me in my own house,' she hissed, 'What do you want from me? Do you want me to sit back whilst my son is being used? I'm your mother!'

'You barely know her. She really tried to get on with you but you didn't give her the time of day! What kind of twisted risk assessment is that?'

'Don't shout for Heaven's sake,' his mother closed her eyes and pressed her hand to her forehead beginning the first act of that familiar sequence; the one where she'd feign a migraine and leave at a point when the argument was in her favour, 'I did this because you've always been the emotional one Leon, even more so than your sister or your cousins. Your heart bruised so easily when you were a child and I don't want to see you hand it over to someone you can't rely on! I know what it's like to be let down and I'd do anything to stop that happening to you.'

'You mean Dad don't you?'

'Who else?' she waved her long, painted nails in the air impatiently, 'It always comes back to him with you. I know that you don't want to think badly of your father but he was unreliable.'

'Dad messed up, I know. But he really loved you. He wasn't perfect but he loved us and that's what matters.'

'It's that rose-tinted vision of yours that has always gotten you into trouble!'

'So just because Dad made a mistake that means that we should act like he never existed?'

'Don't be irrational Leon.'

'Irrational? Do you even hear yourself anymore?' he asked, sounding grim and almost defeated, 'You never talk about him. Every time someone brings him up you change the subject. You just can't stand that I'm like him can you? You look at me and you see Dad, and you hate it.'

'That is not true,' Moira drummed her long nails anxiously against her arm and walked towards him, 'Come back inside and we'll talk about it like rational adults.'

'You mean that you'll talk about it but not listen to anyone else? That's your idea of rational,' Leon replied calmly as he backed away and reached for the front door, 'I know that you're only trying to protect me. I love you Mom, but I'm not Dad and I'm not you either.'

'This isn't a question of that! It's a question of trust and I don't know that you can trust this woman.'

'You know what? I don't know either,' he opened the door spying the outside world through the tiny gap, 'I'll just have to live with the consequences of that. Say goodbye to the others for me.'

Closing it firmly behind him, Leon groaned and massaged his temple with his fingertips in an attempt to rub out this powerful sensation of light-headedness. It only then occurred to him that he'd wanted to say that to her for a very long time.

_Too bad this is a dream._

Ada was still in her car outside the house, as she'd promised. Her hands were crossed tightly over her lap. She was restraining herself from running off and he admired her effort. But he had absolutely no idea of what they'd do next. He'd acted on impulse by asking her to stay and he hadn't truly believed that she would.

It was getting late, the sky was a rich navy blue but it was still strangely bright outside. It was too early to call it a night and they were both teetering on a knife edge. There had to be some way he could get her to relax and smile again. Leon watched her thoughtfully as he approached the driver's side of the car.

'Can I drive?'

He startled her and she stared up at him for a few seconds as if she hadn't heard him.

'Fine,' she edged over to the passenger's seat and rested her arm against the door, 'Just don't scratch the paint. And the gears stick a little when you change into third.'

Leon took the driver's seat and started the car, pulling smoothly off the curb.

'Where are we going?' Ada asked, resting her cheek on the palm of her hand as she watched row after row of trees glide past the window.

He smiled, keeping his eyes trained on the empty road, 'I thought you liked surprises.'

---

_Looking back I realised that I'd spent so much more time on Leon's female relatives than male relatives in this part of the story, barring Leon's father. I wondered about this and I realised that I'd always imagined Leon having a strong maternal presence in his life, especially since he's portrayed as having a strong instinct to protect and comfort people. The RE Archives even call him especially loyal to women. So that's just what I've chosen this time round._

_The next update will be on Wednesday._

_And thank you for the reviews. I could kiss you all, but don't worry I won't. _:-)


	11. Harmony

**Faith**

_Sorry for the late update. I haven't been feeling too well recently but things are getting back to normal now. Thank you for the notes of concern._

**Chapter 11**

**Harmony**

'_Life is like music...'_

_-- Samuel Butler_

She loved her father. She loved him so much that she still let him call her 'Sugar Pie', even though the endearment made her curl her toes with embarrassment. She loved him through every state visit to countries she'd never heard of, through every missed school play, through every late night when he'd wake her by pacing up and down the hallways memorising his speeches out loud. And so she usually drifted from the room, half in and half out of the present, when her father presented the finished, polished version of the lecture. It was as if she'd earned a time out, squirreled away the hours during her sleepless nights and spending them in a room filled with grey strangers.

This time it wasn't the same though. Not this time.

Ashley Graham silently kicked off her lavender high heels and flexed her sore feet against the coarse bumps of the carpet, her soles reading the disjointed brail of age and wear. Arching forwards, like a glass poised dangerously on a table's edge, she was craning to catch every word, to file reality within the darkness of day dreams.

She recognised this speech. It was, almost verbatim, from words to pauses to inflections, the speech she had recited to herself in her cell in Spain. It was the speech that had kept her awake the night before the eveningthat she hadn't returned home from college. It was the speech that she rated as one of her father's worst, his dullest, his driest; it sapped the moisture from the air and made her larynx rattle and her tongue shrivel.

Her mood had brightened when she'd spotted him sitting two rows behind her. He was fast asleep, his head lolling on his neck and coming dangerously close to falling on the shoulders of the woman to his left. His light curtain of hair was obscuring his closed eyes, the ends fluttering as he breathed in and out. As disappointed as Ashley was with the state of her 'coming home party', a galaxy away from the cosy family gathering she had been planning for the entire ride home, at least one thing had high-jumped over her expectations. He was here.

Sure he was unconscious at the moment, but at least he'd come by as he'd vaguely vowed to do. She knew only a meagre fraction of the guests there and most of those were her father's security staff and his old school friends. They'd ask her a random assortment of the same old questions. Seeing Leon across that crowded room had been like spotting the last strawberry tart in a crowded buffet and so she'd skipped across the room like a teenager with a crush to claim his arm for the night.

_The old Ashley would be mortified by that kind of behaviour, but not the new Ashley Graham. No way._

From the moment she'd woken up under the roof of that dilapidated French chateau her one desire had been for chocolate, her pet kitty 'Solitaire' and her laptop. She wanted to write a letter of transfer. She was going to switch from politics, to majoring fully in psychology. It may mean repeating a year but she didn't care; she would have a few weeks ago, but things had changed. Her rational side was telling her that making a critical change in your life was just the fallout from a near death experience. But her heart was determined to live the rest of her life as she had lived those few days in Spain.

By that she didn't mean on the run or covered in blood or watching men and women drop like insects in a heat wave. She just wanted to capture that overpowering desire to live, that potent awareness of her own mortality that through some mysterious twist made her feel almost invincible. Daring and brilliant: that's how she wanted wake up everyday even if that meant disappointing her father through her career choice. She'd make it up to him somehow; maybe with flowers or candy. He was a sucker for chocolate covered coconut and a card from 'Daddy's Little Sugar Pie'.

But as she'd opened up to life's possibilities, Leon had shut himself up like a clam as if he was protecting the mother of all pearls. It was freaking her out. This was a man who only had to look into her eyes and say to her 'We got into this, we can get ourselves out of it,' and she was ready to follow him through any door despite the snarls and shouts that resonated behind it.

He was hot, not doubt about it, and he had an ass that you could bounce a quarter off of. He was competent, brave and confident, and he had treated her as though she was the same way. Though she hadn't been any of those things before meeting him, she had become that way because of his confidence in her. But since setting foot on home soil Leon had become cautious, nervous and retiring. And Ashley couldn't resist doing a little digging and finding out why. She hadn't gotten very far. The red tape surrounding her rescuer's files seemed to multiply like the heads of the Hydra; for every one she breached, two more would take its place. But it had to have something to do with that woman in red, the gravity-defying creature she'd caught a glimpse of before that revolting island had imploded.

'Ada' he'd called her. It was an irresistible name. It sounded like a heartbeat.

Ashley twisted in her seat and her thick dress twisted painfully around her waist. Leon was still in slumber-land, his chin tucked into his chest. He looked peaceful for once despite the rapid twitches of his eyes behind their closed lids. Occasionally the corners of his mouth would curl upwards or he'd sigh or clench his fists. Suddenly his head tipped to the side and his cheek bounced against his neighbour's slim shoulders. The woman squeaked and grabbed his arms, rolling him upright again like a fallen statue. He didn't even open his eyes; he just mumbled inaudibly and continued his dreams. Ashley broke into a fit, coughing against her hand to thinly disguise her giggles. Her back shuddering, she buried her face in her hands and mouthed 'sorry' to her mother who sat just a few places away.

---

It was a jungle of sound, layer upon layer of noise like canopies of leaves. Shrill and wild laughter swung between the branches, the hiss of cymbals evaporated like rain, drumbeats stampeded through the room and tripped over the snake-like twisting of the sax. The room was a den of dark tropical woods as if it was carved from the centre of a giant tree. In the back a mass of couples danced, swaying in time like a hulking, drunken beast. Giant globes of white light hung from the ceiling, illuminated their faces and chased out the shadows. A thick haze of cigarette smoke was suspended above them and he was sure that his head would seem to disappear if he stood up again. Instead he chose to lounge in the high-backed chair, the lush red leather crunching under his weight. In the distance, a bar spanned half of the room, its surface barricaded by rows of colourful bottles, slim glasses and wide plates. Black vases on every table were stuffed with sunflowers and the frantic staff zipped between them taking orders like insects collecting pollen. Framed oil paintings of voluptuous, sugar-coated women hung in the lit recesses of the room and smiled back at them, their bodies stitched sumptuously into the canvas.

'_This_ is your surprise?' Ada had asked him when they'd pulled up just an hour before.

She hadn't said a word throughout the entire journey in her car. Even the soft rush of her breathing had been stifled by the low snarl of the engine and the blast of evening breeze that had charged over the speedy convertible's windscreen and into their laps.

Leon had been in the habit of taking a quick sideways glance to his right every now and again to check that Ada was still there and that she hadn't just stealthily rolled out of the car and escaped without him noticing. So her sudden, cutting remark had almost made him jump in his seat. But he'd been thankful for her earlier silence because it had given him time to figure out exactly how he was supposed to surprise Ada Wong. He'd had no idea where to start. Hell, was it even possible? How do you surprise a woman who had seen things you couldn't even dream of? So he had flipped a coin in the back of his mind at any given intersection. Left or right? Did even it matter? The answer would come, of that he had been sure, because he always thought best when he was on the move. You chase your ideas; they don't come looking for you.

Somehow he'd found his way to the doorstep of 'The Golden Note', a dazzling dive on the corner of a busy street downtown. It was a themed restaurant, a bar and a jazz club that gleamed like a gold filling in mouth of grey teeth. He hadn't been there since his graduation from the academy. It was made for sin, for the night, for laughs and for conversations that the scrutiny of daylight couldn't handle. He wouldn't be surprised if the place no longer existed in the real world, but in his dreams it persisted like the most spotless of memories and always would.

Leon had twisted the keys out of the dashboard, plunging Ada's car into slumber, 'We can go somewhere else if you prefer.'

Ada had stared straight ahead at the bright monolith of a building that towered above them, drawing the eye like the wildest art, 'That's not necessary. I wouldn't want to ruin your evening. You can take a cab back after you're done. But I'm not planning on staying.'

'But you said-'

'I said that I'd help you escape from your house and I've done it. I didn't say how long I'd stay with you. I'd made no plans to harbour a fugitive tonight.'

'You don't always have to go for the loophole Ada,' he'd calmly dropping the car keys into her waiting hands, 'Come in with me and kill a few hours. You can spare me the embarrassment of a table for one.'

'I doubt that you'd stay alone for long,' she'd replied, turning to face him and toying the keys between her limber fingers, searching through the bunch for the one that would fit into the ignition.

'Will you at least stay for some food?'

'I've eaten.'

'No. You've just shovelled food back and forth along your plate like a hockey puck. That's not eating where I come from.'

'Why are you so desperate to get me to come in with you?'

_Because without you there's no point to any of this._

He couldn't say it to her. It hurt to even think it. The words were abrasive against the glass casing he'd erected over his new life.

'You think I have an ulterior motive?' he'd reached over to open the door, 'I'm just hungry and it's about to piss rain out here. Plus looking at you is better than staring into the bottom of an empty beer bottle.'

'You sure know how to flatter a girl,' her voice had been tight as her chest had swelled with a volatile mix of irritation and laughter.

'I'm not going to push this all night with you. I'm hungry, I'm tired, I'm dead on my feet,' Leon had slammed the door shut and tugged his jacket around his neck, 'You're the one with the getaway car. No one's keeping you here.'

He hadn't stopped, he hadn't thought and he'd barely even breathed on the way down that dark sidewalk alone. He'd already made the gamble of a lifetime by throwing Ada in the path of his mother, what did he have to lose by telling the cosmic dealer of his subconscious to hit him again? But by the time he'd wrapped his fingers around the handle of the entrance door he'd suffered an onslaught of regret that had threaten to loosen his teeth from his jaw.

Leon had sworn under his breath and turned back, hoping to find the red convertible still slotted neatly in its place at the other end of the lot. Instead his chest had brushed against hers, the red silk of her dress sliding against his jacket. Ada had faced him calmly and reached past him to throw open the door to the jazz club. The music had swept towards them through the open space to escape into the indigo darkness. He'd tilted his head back and gazed at her questioningly. She'd ignored his raised eyebrows. With his hand hovering nervously on the small of her back they'd entered the reception of the restaurant together.

'Stop smiling. I'm only staying for one drink,' she'd muttered under her breath and taken her place by his right shoulder whilst they'd waited for a seat.

The night had flown by from there. A green marble table was the only physical distance between them. It was a table for two at the edge of the room, surrounded by couples on first dates, all talking over each other, eager to impress the new people in their lives. The jazz club was packed with people, some standing and craning above a sea of heads to spot the band on the elevated stage at the highest point of the hall. A tall man with lungs like the bellows of an ocean liner blew so hard into a trumpet that his cheeks glowed blue and his hands shook. Fingers danced along the keys of the piano and a fractured loop of sound mutated from minute to minute, broken up by the scraping of chairs and the gulping of wine as it was poured into glasses.

Ada had relented against his gentle goading and ordered the tomato soup. The sirloin stake had been more to his taste and they'd both had wine, swirling the colour inside the crystal to distract themselves from the impenetrable bubble of silence that existed at their table despite the explosion of sound and colour that rocked every other corner of the club. Leon had taken off his tie and stuffed it into his pocket. His neck was hot from the exhaustion of small talk. Ada had watched the band and her polite applause was on-cue at every pause of music. She'd been gazing into the bottom of her half-full and cold soup bowl for the past ten minutes, her body perched on her chair, her long legs crossed and her fingers drawing spirals into the tablecloth.

'I'm sorry,' Leon spoke up suddenly, making her turn to him. Her eyebrows dipped forward into a shallow V. The music had muffled his apology so he leaned forward and called to her again, 'I'm sorry!'

'Why? The service may have been a little slow but that's not your fault,' she replied dryly.

It was like Chinese Whispers for two at their table. He'd say one thing and somehow, during the journey from one side of the table to the other, the words would change places like dancers and she'd hear something completely different.

His lips twitched and his eyes searched over her shoulder to where the black windows were splattered with rainwater, 'I'm not talking about that.'

Ada sat back in her chair and waved both palms in the air in a gesture of uncertainty, 'Then what is it?'

'I'm sorry for what happened back there with my mother. She shouldn't have said those things to you,' he smiled faintly, 'You're not the first friend of mine that she's scared off if that makes you feel any better.'

She swallowed a deep breath and rolled her shoulders back, the silk of her dress pulled taut over her chest. He forcibly dragged his eyes away from her beaded nipples. His mouth began to water and he reached quickly for his wine glass.

Staring back at him with an indignant smirk, she shook her head, 'Your mother doesn't frighten me.'

Leon frowned, 'You ran out of the house pretty damn fast.'

'I didn't _run_. And she may not intimidate me but her logic is sound,' Ada replied, her waxy smile seeming to melt, 'I can't trust myself not to hurt you. I shouldn't have taken the risk to come with you today but I'm not afraid of the truth when it shows itself.'

'The truth?'

'Don't pretend that you don't understand,' she continued, her arms crossed over her stomach and her eyes heavily shadowed by fatigue, 'You don't trust me outside of our work together. I can see it in your eyes no matter what you say to me, no matter the invitations to eat lunch with you or when you offer to get me coffee when we work late at the agency. I saw that look in the hospital back in Italy. You were hurt and you hated me. It wasn't just the pain talking. I don't want to see that look from youever again.'

Leon rubbed his forehead with the tips of his fingers and heaved a sigh, inadvertently swallowing a night's worth of acidic smoke. His eyes stinging a little, he coughed and reached for his water.

'Do you blame me?' he croaked.

Ada calmly shook her head, ignoring his coughing fit, 'Of course not. You're not an anomaly. The other agents at the department look at me in exactly the same way. I've earned those looks Leon, but I find it....difficult when I get that treatment from you, however justified it is. Call me a hypocrite if you like, I won't deny it.'

'Then what is this? What were we doing for the past four hours?' he asked her, edging forward in his chair as if crawling towards the answer, 'How did I persuade you to come to my home and meet the most important people in my life if you think I hate you?'

Reaching for her wineglass, which she daintily gripped at the stem between her finger and thumb, Ada glanced around the restaurant. The light from the lanterns reflected in her eyes like tiny specks of fool's gold on a sandy beach.

She took a sip of her red wine, the crimson liquid sliding from the crystal glass and into her mouth. Then she snatched the glass away as though she feared she'd swallow the whole drink in one if given the chance, 'You remember those reports I've written about you?'

'I haven't forgotten,' he muttered, gazing back at her expectantly.

She smiled as she flexed her fingers and inspected the flawless red glaze of her nails, 'I know so much about you Leon, enough to fill a dozen volumes. But over the past few weeks that information has tallied up to nothing,' she continued softly, 'I knew that you had a sister but I didn't know what your relationship with her was like. I didn't know if you were very close or if you were strangers who flocked to the same place out of habit like so many other families do. I had a thousand facts but no context. I had names and faces but they were as flat as the paper they were printed on. Do you understand?'

'I think so. So this was...what? Extra curricular study?'

'No. This was for me, not for the job. This was time off for good behaviour,' she placed her wineglass down firmly onto the table top, her nails rapping against the glass, 'I couldn't believe it, the way you just came up to me after our last debriefing and asked me to meet your family as if it was a perfectly normal thing to do. Perhaps it's because you noticed that I was tired, that I hadn't left headquarters in weeks and you actually cared. I honestly can't begin to tell you why I'm here Leon. But I don't fit in here. I can see how much your family care about you. I could see why you are the way you are but I've taken this as far as it can go.'

He reached over and touched her finger to halt its nervous taping against the base of the wineglass, 'And do you want to go further?'

She slid her fingers away from his but didn't remove her hand from the table, 'What did I just say to you? I _can't_ do that.'

Leon watched her, he felt the strength of her words but he wasn't convinced. He could see her again as she had been back in Raccoon City, in the hospital and at his home. It had been this huge blind-spot that had taken several years and a knock to the head to even begin to clean up. For all her red dresses and posturing Ada really didn't think much of herself. Every time she informed him, quite earnestly, that he didn't trust her or even that he hated her, she was talking about her own feelings, not just his. He distrusted her only half as much as she distrusted herself. She saw herself as expendable. How else had she been able to resign so easily at death's call all those years ago? Why else had she been so eager to let go of his hand? Everything she had revolved around her work and her plans. She was so amazing at her job and she knew it, but the way she looked at him sometimes...he wondered if she was happy this way, or if part of her hoped for more.

_And do you think she'd ever tell you if she did? Come on. You had to haggle with her for ten minutes to get her to order a side salad and a bowl of soup._

Things were harder than they should be and Leon knew it. Since Raccoon City, making small talk with women over a sleepy haze of alcohol had been like breathing, but in Ada's presence he was suffocating. Maybe it was performance anxiety, though he squirmed in his chair at that idea. This was a conversation that mattered despite its fantasy setting.

He'd been on countless dates over the past six years, though few of these seeds had flourished into anything memorable. He'd really tried hard at first, as is his nature. Fiona had been first, just a short week after Umbrella's official destruction. Six months later he'd met Harriet, then Tina and finally Kaitlin, but it had always gone the same way. Flirting that left him walking on air, dinner, movies, maybe a sleep over or two and later a series of increasingly hollow dates until his mind had begun to find excuses not to call them back. He wouldn't realise he'd pulled away until they stopped answering his calls and become simply a blip on his horizon, camouflaged against all of the other bits and pieces of his life that he'd let drift away. Whatever buds of normality had sprung would then wither from neglect as he packed them into the shadows and became unintentionally deaf and blind to their calls for attention.

Kaitlin had made it the furthest with him and for months they'd been a real couple; he'd been happy. She'd shared an apartment with him outside of New York. It had been a small, dusty hole that she'd outgrown as her work in recruitment had shown her hotels in the big city and resorts on tropical islands. He'd watched as her life had begun to overtake his, galloping past like a prize racehorse against a tired mule. But he'd happily shared what he'd had with her as readily as he shared his toothbrush.

But Kaitlin had been smart. She'd seen right through him. He'd never been able to share _his_ work with her, go into detail about his training or tell her where those bruises had come from. Talking to her about anything beyond the disappointing TV schedules or the frosty weather of New York compared to Los Angeles was too hard and bared little reward; it was like ploughing concrete for weeds. Once they had gotten through the basic ice breakers of a new relationship, from favourite foods to family histories, there was nothing left that he could bring himself to discuss in detail. It was permutations of the same old stories, the same names and the same places. It couldn't go beyond the watershed of summer 1998. He could never explain why he chose to work in his study at night rather than lie next to her, why when he did spend a night on a proper mattress he woke up screaming and shivering from a cold sweat, why he couldn't find a phone to call her when he was on his 'business trips' or why he was reluctant to introduce her to his family.

Even in the bedroom they were only playing at intimacy, like children tangled in grown-up's clothes. He'd hold her only until she fell asleep and he'd smile at her because he knew that she expected it and that she liked it when he did, but rarely because he had natural the urge. It was like living part of his life in black and white when the rest, his job, was in glorious technicolour. He'd felt like a fraud.

When he'd returned home from a recon mission to Bogota, Kaitlin had already moved out. She'd broken up with him officially over his answer phone. The message had lasted almost ten minutes but she'd had only one reason: _'Last week...you called me "Ada". It wasn't the first time. I've tried to ignore it for weeks but I can't. You didn't even realise you'd said it did you? And I know that you're not going to tell me who she is, just like you don't tell me anything real about you. I really like you Leon and I know that you'd never want to upset me, but I can't feel like an intruder in my own relationship.'_

It was two days later that Ada's photo had ended up on his desk and he had realised that she was alive.

There had been others since Kaitlin; sweet, pretty, fun and a host of other meaninglessly pleasant adjectives you'd use to describe someone you didn't know very well. It didn't take a genius to work out why. He'd offered Ada Wong the key to his heart a long time ago but she'd thrown it away, only to return years later to pick the lock and smash her way back in leaving a trail of broken glass and bloody footprints behind her. She'd moved in, unpacked her things and was now curled up right in there refusing to leave.

'You said that asking you home was a normal thing for me to do. It isn't. I haven't taken a girl home to meet my family since High School,' Leon told her, the vehemence in his voice causing ears to twitch at the next table, 'But with you I didn't hesitate. That's got to count for something.'

Ada tossed her head away and smoothed her hands over her flat stomach, 'Maybe you're just a glutton for punishment Leon. Not everything we do has a meaning behind it. This could just be a big mistake.'

'I totally disagree.'

'Do you now?' she asked with a sly grin.

Her dark eyes settled over him like an eclipse, her lips swelling into a measured smile. She blinked a few times, her lush cheekbones rising and softening the dark lines around her eyes. The invisible pianist at the bandstand took up a daring solo piece, the notes melting like dew in the air.

Leon suppressed a shiver of delight that erupted out of nowhere.

Clasping his hands together on the table top, he peered at her curiously, 'What does that look mean?'

'Look?' she breathed, staring at him with wide and childlike eyes, 'What look?'

'That one. The one you're doing now where you stare at me and smile but you don't say anything.'

'Maybe you have something in your teeth.'

Leon puckered his lips, his tongue curling behind his teeth, 'For starters, no I don't. That steak was so tender that I could almost swallow it without chewing. And this isn't the first time you've given me that look. You had it on the first time I saw you.'

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head to the side, her glossy hair brushing past her bare shoulder, 'What did you think when you met me for the first time?'

'You mean when you almost shot me?'

Then she shrugged, her smile still firmly on her lips, 'If you want nitpick.'

'I don't know what I thought. There was so much going on at the time,' he thought back to the darkness, the blood and the death, but it was simply a jumble of experience and emotion now, 'At first I...I thought you were a ghost. I didn't think that you were real.'

She bit her lip and stared at him like he was a child scared of the thing in his closet.

'Don't look at me like that. I'd already had zombies. Ghosts weren't that big of a leap,' Leon assured her of the method in his madness, 'You were too beautiful to be real, you were too confident. I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't wondered if I'd just imagined you. It wasn't until we both met Ben that I began to believe that you were flesh and blood like me. It didn't take me long to realise how extraordinary you were.'

'Extraordinary?'

'Yeah. You were extraordinarily manipulative, contradictory, aloof and self-centred,' he replied evenly, 'But I felt safe when I was around you. There was no one else I'd rather have watching my back.'

As crazy as that was, it was also the truth. Leon had never had a partner to work with. He would have been assigned one in Raccoon City but that of course had been nipped in the bud on day one. He usually worked alone at the agency. He was occasionally placed into a team during an assignment, but even then, they were a unit with ties of skill and professionalism to bind them, with common goals and rules that they read from the same handbooks and with superiors that they answered to as one. The camaraderie was fleeting, persisting only until they were split and shuffled into new units for new assignments, their combinations fitting particular profiles.

Ada was different. She and Leon answered to wildly different people, they had independent and sometimes contradictory aims, they walked on separate paths, they met in a myriad of different nightmares and were well versed in walking away from each other and staying away for weeks, months or years at a time. Yet after all that, she was still the only partner he'd ever known. There was this fit between them, this silent bond. Their default setting was a bizarre kind of loyalty, like the twist at the end of the tale when everything would suddenly slot into place. They'd always end up together at the same spot, with a rocket launcher at hand when things got rough, as if they were both on the same side but neither of them had been told in advance.

'No one else?' she asked him dubiously, 'Even when I pointed a gun at that same back?'

Leon reclined in his chair, his feet grazing the polished floor, 'It wasn't loaded.'

'You didn't know that.'

'But I called your bluff. The really ridiculous thing is...' he shook his head in disbelief, '...it wasn't a guess. I don't know how I did it but I just _felt_ that you wouldn't go through with it.'

Ada gently lifted the wine bottle from the table and filled her empty glass, topping his up by a few inches on the way, 'Samuel Butler once said "Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule." I never understood that until you faced me down on that catwalk. I couldn't get over how stupid you were being. You were this eager, clueless young man and yet you were yelling at me and ordering me around as if you were in charge.'

'Guess the uniform didn't mean much to you then?'

She placed the wine bottle back onto the table with a soft clink, 'Let's just say that I warmed to you in spite of the uniform.'

'And then what happened when we reached the lab? Did you suddenly change your mind?'

'Leon,' her eyes fell shut, her chin dipping towards her chest, 'I had a job to do. But after every stupid thing you'd done to protect me I couldn't help but ignore that. I played by ear, feeling and instinct, and it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever done. That's why I wasn't afraid to die. For a few hours I'd felt alive for the first time in over a decade and it was because of you.'

Leon's sides trembled as he exhaled the stale air that had been building in his chest as he'd listened to her. The jazz band somewhere behind him had been silent for several minutes but he only just noticed. Conversations between the other diners still flowed as thick and constant as the wine they drank; the volume rose and dipped between the lengthening gaps of his heartbeat. He swallowed hard, his fingertips digging into the plush tablecloth. Without warning, Ada opened her eyes, blinking rapidly. She almost glared at him, her eyes sparkling under a film of moisture as if she was on the verge of tears but wouldn't let a single one free.

'Am I telling the truth?' she murmured, the sharp lines of her eyebrows curling as she frowned, 'I'm curious to know if you think that I'm telling the truth because I don't know the answer myself.'

Her laugh was soft enough to blunt the edge of her sarcasm and her hands darted up to rake through her hair and shake it straight.

He stretched over the table and took hold of her right hand before it could return to her lap, locking her warm fingers through his and bringing them back to the safety of the tabletop.

'How do you know when a lawyer is telling a lie?' he asked sliding her fingers one by one to nestle between his.

Ada blinked at him, her other hand joining the pile of palms and fingers he'd created.

'When his lips are moving,' she replied with a steady smile, 'I wish it was that easy to tell where the rest of the world is concerned.'

'Yeah. Me too.'

She bit her lip for a moment before replying, 'I do enjoy being with you Leon. Honestly.'

He held himself back from doing a celebratory jig around the table, 'Are you teasing me?'

'Do you like it when I tease you?'

'Sometimes. Though I'd prefer it if you did it without running away afterwards.'

'I'm not going anywhere Handsome,' she squeezed his hands before pulling away, 'You haven't bought me dessert yet.'

Smiling deeply he beckoned over the maître d'. He ordered the cheesecake and turned to ask Ada which she'd prefer. She rolled her eyes and mouthed 'Chocolate. Obviously.'

Hunched over their plates, they talked whilst slicing into a rich, gooey dessert, the base crumbling against their forks and the sugar dissolving on their tongues.

'What's your favourite food?' he asked her before shovelling in another mouthful.

Ada slid the fork from between her lips and blinked at him sceptically.

'Please,' he pleaded patiently.

She pursed her lips and thought for a second, 'There's this restaurant outside of Palermo. It serves the best bruschetta in the world. I quite happily could eat nothing but that for the rest of my life. What about you? Your sister told me about your obsession with ketchup.'

'"Obsession"? That's such an exaggeration. I'd call it a "wholehearted admiration". It's incredibly versatile. You can put it on anything.'

She poked her fork at him, 'Ketchup isn't food. It's a condiment'

'I was only five years old,' he chuckled, clearing his throat as clump of crumbs sailed down the wrong tube, 'I didn't have the best developed palette in the world.'

'Evidently,' she replied airily, 'So what about now that you're all grown up?'

He paused for a moment, licking the chocolate sauce from his bottom lip, 'Pot-roast. I lived on that at the academy. The guys on my corridor would actually offer to do my laundry if I made them some.'

'I bet you look cute in a little apron.'

'Real men don't wear aprons.'

'Real men?' she parroted back, drawing the words out to mock the very idea, 'It's cooking Leon, not a blood sport.'

'You wouldn't say that if you'd seen my mom and Aunt Sarah cooking Thanksgiving dinner a few years back. I had to confiscate the knives,' he smiled impishly and gave a mock-shudder as he remembered the screaming, the smoke and the calls he'd made to the fire department and then to the local pizza parlour, 'I think handling food is something I got from my father because it's one of the few things my mom doesn't excel at.'

His smile wasted away at the mention of his parents and the insurmountable disparity between his knowledge of each of them.

Ada wiped the crumbs from her lips with the napkin, 'You must miss him. You're the only one I've heard talk about him like that.'

Leon nodded weakly, 'Hannah doesn't remember much about him. She was barely a year old when he died. It's harder for Mom. Whatever she felt for him back then, after he died she started to think of him as the guy that made her a widow before thirty.'

She didn't reply. She brought her fingers together into a steeple as though she expected him to continue.

'Do you think it's possible to fight so hard for something that it overwhelms everything?'

She frowned at him, her fork paused midway between the plate and her lips, 'What do you mean?'

'The past,' he replied, taking a deep breath to clear his head, 'Back in Spain, Krauser asked me what I fought for. The first answer that came to my head was "the past". I've been thinking about it a lot and it's got me spinning around the same point.'

'Jack Krauser was fighting for the future, a twisted future but a future nonetheless. And look where he ended up,' she pointed out to him rationally, 'It's a little odd you know. Before Egypt you hadn't mentioned Spain to me at all. Once I allied myself with your agency it was as if that operation had never happened. Why think back to it now?'

'Maybe because to me it feels like it happened only a few days ago.'

'Perhaps that's a good thing. The past is the foundation of the future. The weaker our understanding of it the more likely we are to repeat our mistakes.'

'How do we know when to let go of the past?'

'I don't know. I find it more lucrative to dig my fingers into the present,' she replied, pushing her plate away and resting her elbows on the table.

Though he couldn't imagine what had twisted Jack into that monster, he knew that whatever Wesker had offered him had illuminated the path of his future, offered him guidance and a cause to bleed for. Whereas Leon's cause, though worthy, sometimes felt like it had been designed and cut for someone else.

Hoisting his wineglass into the air, Leon watched the light bleed through liquid and dye it from red to dark amber, 'To the future,' he toasted.

Ada raised her glass, its rim kissing his, 'To the future. May it be as swift and as painless as possible.'

'That's not very optimistic,' Leon laughed and lowered his glass, 'There's always the chance that it won't be so bad.'

'I suppose I can think of a few fun ways to spend the next couple of years,' Ada smiled over her glass, taking a leisurely taste and flicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

'Care to share your ideas with me?'

She shook her head slowly, locks of dark hair tumbling forwards and tickling the bridge of her nose. Leon's grin became impossibly wide as he watched her. His eyes were drawn to her mouth to trace the lingering droplets of wine that stained her lips an even darker shade of red. Ada didn't look away this time; she simply settled her eyes on his face and waited, giving him a good, long look at her. She was breaking him, becoming more beautiful as his dreams made her mortal. Arching over the table, she rubbed her thumb against the corner of his mouth, wiping at some invisible stain. His heart fell to collide with his stomach, the result detonating a firebomb of heat through his body.

_If things keep going like this then I am going to get up, scoop her into my arms and... That's not a bad idea._

'Dance with me,' he whispered against her thumb.

'What?'

Leon stood and edged around the crowded table to reach her, 'Dance with me. Just for a little while.'

Ada stared blankly at the hand he offered, 'I don't dance.'

'Neither do I,' he replied a little bashfully, 'But whatever happens in "The Golden Note" stays in "The Golden Note". My lips are sealed.'

Finally she threw her napkin onto the table and rose. She slipped her hand into his as they weaved through the crowd and found a sizable gap on the dance floor. Ada turned to face him as the band began a laid-back instrumental of 'The Nearness of You'.

With a gentle pull of his hand, Leon gathered her into a light embrace and slid his arm around her waist. She felt stiff at his touch. He resisted his urge to frown. They stepped closer to the throng of dancers and they had a near collision with another couple. Leon muttered a quick 'sorry' and pressed his palm to Ada's shoulder to guide her away. The moment he touched her skin she relaxed into him. She tucked her head into the crook of his neck and he inhaled the sweet scent of her hair. He touched her again, this time caressing her bare arm and painting her goose-bumps with his fingers.

Her body felt incredibly light, but she was firm, her footsteps so strong that he often forgot who was leading and her heartbeat was powerful, reverberating from her chest to his like a clap of thunder. She held on tighter than she needed to. He let her. Ada's silk dress slipped over his fingertips as he rubbed her back and she snuck her fingers beneath the waistband of his slacks for a second, before massaging the base of his spine. He heard her sigh as she delicately stretched her arms upwards and looped them around his neck, her sleepy almond eyes meeting his face.

'I thought you said you didn't dance. You're not so bad,' she murmured, almost impressed.

'When I was eighteen my mom made me accompany debutants to society balls,' he replied after a moment's pause, 'I hated it. I really hated it. But she insisted I either take the dance lessons or lose three weeks of my summer to work at her golf club caddying for her friends. I thought she was punishing me for something.'

She tightened her arms around his neck, sliding her face a little higher up to his, 'But you ended up enjoying it didn't you?'

Hesitating for a split second, Leon took her hand and broke away from her, spinning her under his arm and twirling her gently on the spot. The dark, liquid fabric of her dress beating against her legs like wings. Light flowed through the folds of her gown, as bright as stardust, before he slid her back to him. Her supple chest bounced softly against his and she laughed, her eyes falling tightly shut and her free hand grasping tightly at his elbow. Ada buried her forehead into his shoulder, her laughter so loud that they caught a few of curious looks from their waltzing neighbours.

He let out a shaky breath before pressing a quick, hard kiss to her neck, the spicy scent of her skin melting on his tongue. Ada's smile, her _real_ and _unreserved_ smile, was so rare that it knocked his world from its axis. She pressed her cheek against his as she fell into step with him. She moved with him as perfectly as she had when they'd sparred in the gym during a dream that felt like it belonged in the distant past, not in the previous week. For the first time since these flights of fancy had begun, he was grateful for being plucked from the real world and dropped here, in this anti-reality with her. If the real world could never feel like this then what was the point in waking up?

Ada caressed the back of his neck, her touch guiding his attention straight back to her again, 'Do you want to know something?' she asked him, her sea-green eyes sweeping his face.

Leon nodded dreamily, his hand gliding to a stop between her shoulder blades, 'Sure.'

She tilted forwards and her forehead met his. Her lukewarm breath tasted of red wine, 'I've never wanted to kiss anyone as much as I want to kiss you right now.'

He barely noticed that they'd stopped moving or that he'd tightened his hold on her. The heat from a hundred bodies within the jazz club warmed her until she almost glowed against him.

'So I have to ask you. Am I telling the truth?' she continued, her voice low and steady.

Moved by his need, that surge of energy that relentlessly assaulted him when he was near her, Leon brushed the back of his fingers against her lips, 'I don't know. Maybe I could find out.'

He did when he kissed her.

Ada sunk her fingers into his hair and moaned straight into him, the sweetest and tiniest nuances of her taste dissolving against his mouth, disappearing before he could commit them to memory, but staying just long enough to train his body to accept only her from now on. He was done for and he knew it, but this wasn't the time or the place to go down without a fight, so he grazed his teeth against her lips. Her fingers tensed fitfully against his scalp. Moving to the upturned corners of her mouth, he nibbled gently as she nuzzled her nose along his face and whispered his name against his cheek, calling him back to kiss her again. He did as he was told. A deep groan exploded from his gut and he deepened the kiss as her legs brushed against his giving him the illusion that they were still swaying to the music. The only thing he had left to wish for was to wake up and find that this wasn't just a dream.

Tough luck, he knew it was.

When the song ended the band stood to receive their applause. The clapping became louder and louder, and though his lungs burned from a dangerous deficit of oxygen, Leon clung to Ada as hard as he could. He felt her pour her affection into their kiss during its final moments. Perhaps she knew it was ending. It gave him solace that he wasn't alone. Yet.

His closed and trembling eyelids shut out what he knew would follow. He understood quite deeply that it was over. But he didn't want to watch her fade away. It was bad enough that it soon felt as though he were hugging thin air as his dream withered and died in his arms. He couldn't stand to see it happen before his eyes. The ovation from the crowd grew, hammering at his ears, rushing like a wave of sound and drowning him.

Leon grimaced and opened his eyes, wincing at the bright lights of reality. He wanted to scream and he would have if he hadn't suddenly clamped his teeth down onto his tongue. His head snapped up as he straightened in his chair and looked from corner to corner of the hall to find the President's guests applauding his completed speech.

No one seemed to have noticed that he'd been asleep. Their eyes were forward and trained keenly on the podium where President Graham stood with a craftily modest expression on his face. But the woman sitting next to Leon turned every now and again to give him a look of disapproval. Blushing furiously, Leon joined in with the applause and congratulated the President on a lecture he hadn't heard. But as he wiped the soreness and thin film of moisture from his eyes, Leon was aware that his lips still felt swollen from that kiss; a kiss that had been no more real than the woman who'd shared it with him.

A heavy sensation, suspiciously like loss, came over him as he smiled tightly and joined the slightly farcical standing ovation. He'd connected with Ada, or whoever this woman really was and he'd been given the chance to go one-on-one with the part of her that she'd always teased him with, whipping her away when he got too close as if she were a matador with a red flag. He swore under his breath, cursing the cruelty that had made it the best kiss he'd ever had.

---

If it hadn't been for the oversized clock that dominated the wall of the lobby, it would have been almost impossible to tell that it was midnight was slowly creeping up on them. Officers, administrators, diplomats and cleaners still occupied their stations as if it was noon on a Monday. The lights were at full blast, the coffee flowed like rain and the light smashing of fingers against keyboards was constant and almost comforting. The CIA headquarters at Langley never slept and never took a day off. It flew its flag at full mast seven days a week. Maybe that's why Leon felt so at home there.

After the President's speech, he'd risen from his seat and said a quick goodbye to Ashley, who had cryptically replied, 'Unlike the old Ashley, the new Ashley won't hold it against you.'

He'd wanted to stay there and socialise like a normal guy would on a Saturday night, but after his dream an evening of polite and mediocre conversation with people who couldn't remember his name was less than appealing. That fantasy of his family and Ada had drained him, leaving him feeling empty and fragile like a china cup. One wrong move and he'd end up in tiny pieces all over the floor. Leon, feeling too tired and spaced-out to drive, had taken a cab home from the reception. But before the car had reached within three blocks of his apartment, he'd sat up and told the driver to take him straight to Langley instead.

Though he'd been informally banned from the place after his enthusiastic research project, he couldn't resist the urge to step inside again, talk to people and get something done. Mitchell would be his first port of call. Leon hadn't seen his superior officer since returning from Spain, but he knew Mitchell would listen to his concerns about Umbrella and the CIA's investigation. And if all else failed he could bite the bullet and tell him about 'Project Lazarus' and Ada's message. That was a strategy that would likely blow up in his face, but he was facing a brick wall at the moment and if a hefty explosion was what he needed to clear it then so be it.

Leon sleepwalked through the usual identification checks, retinal scans, body scans and voice verification before entering the main offices of the agency's legion of directors and officers. There were no windows on this floor, but large UV lamps gleamed from the walls and fed the waxy plants that embellished every desk and spare corner. At the main desk outside Mitchell's office a familiar figure stood over her workspace quickly and competently shoving stacks of paper into a sturdy envelop. Her long brown hair was arranged into a stack of tight ringlets that barely wobbled despite the fast pace of her movements and she was clad in a long evening dress covered in black and white stripes, its hem ending in a fringe that reached her ankles.

'Wow,' Leon gave a low whistle as he stepped out of the elevator, 'I had no idea that the agency had beefed up its dress code. Lucky I'm still wearing my tie.'

Ingrid Hunnigan turned with a freshly arrange face of make up and a good-natured frown of disapproval, 'Aren't you supposed to be at the White House?'

'I left early. Been keeping a close eye on me?' he asked coming to a stop beside her desk.

She rolled her eyes and continued pawing through the stack of papers on her desk, 'Someone has to.'

'What's the rush?' he nodded at the files, their covers stamped with a thick red stamp marked "Eyes Only".

'I have to finish these before I can leave for the evening,' she barely paused for breath as she threw open one of the draws and extracted a lethal looking hole punch, 'Heather would usually be the one doing this but her father's ill and she needed the night off.'

'Anything I can do to help?'

Hunnigan shook her head vigorously, her motionless hair a marvel of engineering, 'I'm almost done. With any luck I'll only be a _little_ late for my anniversary and Cathy won't be in a foul mood when I get there.'

'Women trouble?' Leon asked gently nudging on of the files with his fingers to expose the small, nine point type beneath.

She slapped his hand away and snatched the papers, 'From the look of things I'm not the only one. When did you last get a good night's sleep?'

Leon hadn't been back in the States for long before a draft of office gossip had blown his way from the direction of the water-cooler. Ingrid had apparently been in a relationship with a kindergarten teacher name Catherine for three years now. After an instant of mild shock and a piercing sensation of embarrassment, Leon had shrugged it off and found later that flirting with her was still as harmless and satisfying as it had been over his radio. She was intelligent, scarily efficient and obliviously cute, but it never hurt when their relationship drifted steadily in an orbit between the professional and the intimate. In fact it was a relief; an exquisite kind of failure.

'I'm going to have to plead the fifth on that one,' he replied before glancing at Mitchell's office, its solid oak door closed to curious eyes, 'Is Director Mitchell in?'

'It's a Saturday, where else would he be?' she laughed lightly, 'The front desk notified him of your entrance ten minutes ago. He said you should go right in.'

'How did he know I was going to his office and not anywhere else in the building?'

Ingrid shrugged and straightened the straps of her dress, 'Why don't you ask him? All I know is that he's been talking about you a lot to the senior agents. I think Spain really put it over the top for him.'

'Or perhaps it was that report you wrote on me. What was it?' he paused pretending to struggle to remember, '"brash, ill-advised and exceptional"?'

'I also wrote "cocky".'

'I like the sound of that. I'll have it made into a T-Shirt,' he replied as he backed away towards Mitchell's office, 'Enjoy your dinner Hunnigan.'

She winked at him a little awkwardly before scooping her files into her hand and scampering away to catch the elevator.

Leon rapped his knuckles against Mitchell's door and opened it at the sound of a muffled 'enter'. If they glanced towards the ceiling of Drew Mitchell's office most people would get the impression that it was a spacious expanse of classical architecture, but whatever luxury of leg room the area had had before his arrival was now lost under a dozen rock-solid bookshelves, cabinets, trophy cases and computers. The shelves were lined with hardback spy novels, everything from Ian Fleming to Robert Ludlum. He'd offered to lend Leon a few copies, stating that how much he wished that a regular day in the office could be as stimulating as any single page of those hefty tomes. Mitchell was as pragmatic as any agent feared he could become. With every upgrade in pay and every promotion, Mitchell simply invested more and more in his work with the agency. Director Mitchell was a tall man with a heavy build, but he moved swiftly and nimbly through any tight corner.

'Leon,' Mitchell waved him over to the desk at the centre of the office, 'Sit down.'

'You wanted to see me?'

'Sure it wasn't the other way around? Come on, take a seat.'

As he advanced further into the room Leon found that the director wasn't alone. Agent Rick Harris, the senior manager of the task force against Umbrella, was sitting opposite him. He was a 'numbers man' and a skilled bureaucrat, his black hair so thin and slick that it looked like it had been painted directly onto his scalp. He knew more about the inner framework of organised crime, government and espionage that most people in the building, but in the opinion of most field agents he didn't understand them. Any trained monkey could memorise a series of symbols and match them, but that didn't mean that they could comprehend the subtleties and depth of a language, it didn't mean they could communicate with what was essentially another species. Harris judged the success of a mission in terms of cost, efficiency and subtly; but not by much else. Leon, like many other field agents, had begun to resent the black and white view he took of their work and to him there was a clear divide between men like Mitchell who backed his agents up and men like Harris who just threw more paperwork in their direction.

'How was the President's presentation?' Mitchell asked, swivelling towards him.

'It was...interesting,' Leon replied cautiously as he took a seat.

'Really? It's a shame I missed it. What was it about this month?'

Leon frowned as he hastily tried to reconstruct President Graham's speech from earlier that night. However, all he could make out was the President standing on a podium, his lips moving but no sound coming out, as if he were half of a ventriloquist's act.

Eventually he shook his head, 'Damned if I know.'

Mitchell stared at him blankly for a few moments before erupting into a deep, booming laugh, the back of his tall, leather chair shuddering, 'At least you were honest about it. That's more than I'd be. And to think I was disappointed that I didn't receive an invitation to the event. Sounds like it was a blessing in disguise.'

Leon laughed, blood flowing back into his cheeks so fast that he felt a little lightheaded.

'It's a good thing you're here,' Mitchell continued, leaning back in his chair till it almost looked as though he was about to topple to the ground, 'Rick and I were discussing the President's latest budget announcement and it's killing us. We need a change of subject, don't we Rick?'

Harris seemed to flinch every time Mitchell used his first name, 'Yes Sir.'

'I'll do whatever I can to help,' Leon shuffled a little closer to the main desk, the wheels of the chair giving an ear-splitting squeak, 'But I'm a little wiped out. I may not be the best company you could ask for.'

Mitchell straightened, his large feet scuffing the carpet as leaned towards his desk, 'You'll do for now. I understand that you've been spending quite a bit of time at HQ, in the records room specifically. You requested a copy of the mission reports for Project Delta.'

Inhaling suddenly through his nose, Harris cut in, 'They're above your clearance level.'

'I guessed that after I was turned down,' Leon replied evenly, 'It was just a little background work.'

'The CIA archives aren't your personal library Agent Kennedy,' Harris informed him, 'After the events of Spain and the procedures that the Los Illuminados performed on you, it did seem a little suspect that you were conducting an unauthorised investigation.'

Bristling under the mention of Saddler's cult, their horrific experimentation branded a simple 'procedure', Leon resisted the impulse to erupt completely.

'Are you suggesting that I've been brainwashed?' he asked calmly, 'I was cleared by the agency's medical staff three times.'

'If it was only that then I'd agree with you,' Harris said almost pleasantly, 'But you also let an enemy agent slip through your fingers and you failed to bring back a sample of Las Plagas for analysis.'

'Sorry, I was too busy making sure that a parasitic organism didn't erupt out of the Ashley Graham's chest.'

'If you girls want to continue with this can you do it outside?' Mitchell muttered gravely, 'As I said it's already been a long night.'

Both agents nodded stiffly and pointedly turned away from each other.

'If that's all Director Mitchell, I'll be on my way. I have a debriefing to organise,' Harris rose and smoothed the front of his brittle, white shirt.

'Sure Rick. Thanks for coming in. I know how busy you've been lately,' Mitchell replied with a small smile.

Barely acknowledging Leon's presence, Harris swept out of the office leaving a trail of cheap cologne in his wake. Mitchell sat back in his seat, swivelling from left to right whilst keeping his sharp eyes trained on him. Leon sighed and pressed his fingertips into his forehead.

'You don't have to say it. I already know.'

'Do you?' Mitchell asked, turning is palms outwards, 'Because I personally can't think of a reason as to why you routinely piss off the guy in charge of the very task force you want to be a part of.'

'A guy's gotta have a hobby,' he smiled and gave a clumsy shrug, 'I'm sorry. I'll apologise to Agent Harris later. It's difficult letting go of the project when I feel that I can still contribute.'

'Welcome to the CIA Leon. This is what it will always be like whether you're the Director or the guy who makes the coffee. We can't choose our assignments. If we could I wouldn't be crunching numbers on a Saturday night. When it's for the good of the agency you will have to let go and let others handle it.'

'Understood.'

'Really? This time?'

Leon smirked, 'You can hold me to that.'

_At least until I've got enough evidence to get the agency to take me seriously._

Mitchell inclined his head towards the younger agent and grinned, 'Bourbon?'

'No, thanks. It's not to my taste.'

His superior stood and, with a grunt, stretched his aching back, 'Suit yourself.'

He unlocked the polished, ornate wooden doors to a cabinet beside his desk and removed a half empty bottle of Kentucky Bourbon and a glass. Whilst pouring himself a couple of fingers of the brown liquor, Mitchell enquired easily, 'How are you Leon? How's your vacation treating you?'

'Having the time of my life.'

Mitchell sucked back a mouthful of his drink, hissing at the fiery back-burn of its aftertaste, 'You can be honest. The room's not bugged.'

'Sure about that?' Leon retorted with an exaggerated whisper. When Mitchell didn't even crack a smile, he continued, 'Things have been...hard. Physically I'm doing well. I don't need pain killers anymore. I can take off the remaining bandages and stitches in a few days. Dr Campbell says she'll clear me for full duty in just over a month. But I haven't been sleeping much and when I do I keep...I keep having these dreams.'

'You can talk to someone here about that.'

'It's not post-traumatic stress. At least it's not any kind that I've heard about,' he exhaled in frustration as he tried to find the words to describe it, 'It's like a waking dream where I'm in complete control of my actions but not of anything else. People I meet and interact with are exactly as they are in reality. It's accurate down to every last fibre. And when I wake up it feels as though...as though I've died and been ripped out of one reality and thrown into another.'

Rubbing the back of his hand against his thin beard, Mitchell sat heavily into his chair, 'What are the dreams about?'

Leon glanced away, 'I don't know yet. I suppose they're about...people. People I've lost and people I want to find again.'

His superior's bushy, grey eyebrows wiggled with confusion before finally settling over his dark eyes. Mitchell reached over the wide desk to a small, gold photo frame and turned it towards Leon. Inside the frame was a picture of young, blonde girl. She was curled up in a plump armchair with an open book on her lap, her attention directed studiously into its thick pages.

'That's my daughter Lillian,' Mitchell pointed at the picture, his wide, tanned fingers tracing the elegant, thin gold wire of the frame.

Leon glanced up at him, 'I didn't know that you had children. How old is she?'

'She's twelve,' he pursed his thin lips together before adding, 'She'll always be that age to me. She died about ten years ago. She should be in college now but...'

'I'm really sorry. What happened to her?'

'Leukaemia,' Mitchell announced almost brightly before relaxing back into his chair, 'After it happened I went through every book and journal I could find on the illness. I spoke to everyone I could. It was this relentless pursuit of answers and reasons. I didn't sit and grieve. My wife did that, but I felt at the time that it was a waste of energy. I was a moron. I'd read all of this medical jargon and I'd memorised the names of every stinking type of cancer on this planet before it finally sunk in that this couldn't bring Lil home. Hindsight is a bitch, Leon. It's like getting geared up for a battle after the war has already totalled your backyard. Do you understand?'

Leon listened intently to Mitchell's confident pitch, each word drilled with painful finality into his skull, 'Are you telling me to give up my interest in Umbrella?'

'No. I'm telling you to not let it bury you. I may not spend every weekend at a second rate, roach motel in order to attend a medical conference in Wichita, but I haven't forgotten my daughter. I'm part of a committee for Omni-Pham. They're a charity that studies different strains of childhood illness. I found my answer there,' Mitchell paused and tilted the glass of liquor in his hand, 'At least I thought I had. We do whatever we can to feel closer to the ones we've lost. But we usually end up further from them than ever by the end of it.'

The light hit the liquid in his glass and split into a thousand shades of brown and gold. After a lengthy pause Mitchell lifted it to his lips and swallowed the last of it in one go, 'This crap will bury you if you let it,' he croaked, shadows leaking into the wrinkles on his forehead making him appear older.

Leon knew that he wasn't referring to the alcohol, 'You think I'm becoming obsessed?'

'Perhaps you are.'

'I think it's more than that. A lot more.'

'Such as?'

Leon opened his mouth but his tongue was a dead weight. He knew that his work into Umbrella wasn't just a tether to the past. True, he was grinding himself into the ground at the moment, but it was for a good cause. It was for the truth. It was to potentially save lives. He stared back at the expectant look on the face of his superior officer and felt shame coiling around his ribs.

He could tell Mitchell everything; he could tell him about Ada, the message, Lazarus and Zoë. He could unload every damned ounce of this burden and get on with having a vacation. He could visit his sister in Ireland, spend more time with Tess and play a little basketball with a few guys from his old academy who were now officers for the Washington DC police department. There were so many things he should be doing right now; so many great and relaxing and normal things. And he wanted to do them so badly that he often found himself minutes away from making a few phone calls and booking a flight to Europe.

However, there would come that inevitable moment when he'd close his eyes and see her; when the sound of footsteps below his window would send him out onto the terrace where a pair of green, exotic eyes would gaze at him from the darkness and remind him that no land, no oceans and no walls could separate them in the dead of night. He couldn't outrun his subconscious. Maybe he was being a little selfish and a little vain, he was definitely crazy, but he had to see this through to its natural end and he had to do it alone.

'I can't think of anything right now,' Leon admitted as though he was embarrassed by a lack of progress, 'Nothing comes to mind.'

Mitchell's eyes narrowed as he smiled genially, 'Then get some sleep Agent Kennedy. And watch some TV, walk your dog, whatever. I just don't want to see you within a mile of this place.'

Leon eased his body out of the chair, 'Is that an order?'

He stood up and rounded the desk to roughly pat Leon on the shoulder, 'If anyone in this building so much as says your name then so help me God I'm having you arrested.'

Mitchell walked Leon to the door, his steps a little stiff and ungainly, as though he was walking on ice, making the younger man wonder exactly how many glasses of bourbon his superior had had that night.

'You sure you're gonna be all right here Sir?'

'I'm almost done. Then I'll get Joyce to call me a cab,' Mitchell rubbed his shoulder, 'I'll be glad to get out of here for the night. Never let them put you behind a desk, Kennedy.'

'It's that bad? I thought you liked your job.'

'Oh I do,' he clumsily threw open the door to his office, 'But you'd hate it.'

Leon shook his hand and left, closing the door behind him. Striding slowly towards the elevator, he stabbed the call button and waited; his shoulder slumped against the wall and his attention fixed on the soft hiss of the air conditioning vent above him.

Maybe this is how ideas are born. Not through torturous experimentation, not through repetition and habit, not through prayer or colourful flowcharts or reams of paper or the menacing voices that beckon from the darkness like silver bells. The best and brightest of ideas surface from the depths of the black oceans. They're often large and beaming brilliantly with age so it's almost embarrassing for their owner to admit that they hadn't seen it all along. But sometimes an idea isn't a creation of something new; instead it's a removal. Like a sudden elimination of the gauzy screens that have been blurring your sight and idea reveals the world for what it really is. It shows you what you already knew but hadn't yet been ready to face.

Knowledge is like a hammer shattering these screens, whether they were natural or manmade and the shards that fall are wisdom; a silhouette against the lights that blind you. They give you the truth, or rather one level of the truth that will persist until the next demolition when everyone and everything change places once again.

His hands were stiff by his sides and fingers flexed as he pierced his palms with his fingernails. Leon entered the elevator, staring ahead almost emptily until the doors slid shut. Alone in the steel box as it lowered him to ground level, he collapsed wearily against the wall and watched the dials above steadily plummet to from seven to one. From the very heartbeat his idea had occurred to him he'd begun making his plans. Dread, denial, excitement and anger, all undirected and dangerous, made him sweat and shiver as he ran out onto the frosty sidewalk and hailed a cab.

This was the effect of his sudden revelation.

---

_Look out for another update this Saturday!_


	12. The Ice Breaker

_Author's Note:__ Please excuse me while I repost this chapter as the previous version of it had a few more mistakes than I was comfortable with. I've made a couple of variations to this chapter of the story so feel free to re-read this it if you need a re-fresher. I'm afraid to even check the dates of when I last updated this._

---

**Chapter 12**

**The Ice Breaker**

_Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love._

_-- Albert Einstein_

For most people the city's winter sunset didn't exist. But Leon knew that it was real enough if he stuck around for a while and watched. This wasn't something you could see from behind the concrete walls of an office block or snatch glimpses of as you wrestled for space on a commuter train. At around seven every night the floor to ceiling windows of his home framed a natural pyrotechnic display. A hole would split through the layer of green pollution that coated the night sky like moss and then a slice of amber light would wink through the gap in the clouds before the tear was sewn up by the guiding hand of the wind.

From the secluded perch of his apartment's balcony he'd seen this display a dozen times in the past few weeks. Each time the colours would hum a little louder through the cold air. He'd begun to think of it as the last sleepy gasp of the sun. He'd originally chosen this apartment because it towered over one of the best routes to Langley, but this sight filled him with an unexpected satisfaction. Soon he'd be able to call this place his 'home from home'.

Seven storeys below him the rush-hour traffic was well underway; in a manner of speaking. The line of cars seemed as permanent and immovable as the buildings around them. The headlamps blinked against the black tar of the road and a futile but unrelenting chorus of honks and cries from exhausted commuters rose hand in hand with the pollution spewing from their cars.

It was getting colder and he felt it from the tips of his fingers to his elbows. Inside the apartment his kitchen sink was piled with stained dishes and crusty coffee cups. The swampy water was tepid and murky. It was a playground for the fly that had buzzed in circles around the kitchen all day but hadn't yet found the open window. Piles of newspaper clippings and computer printouts mingled with takeout menus and dry cleaning receipts. His apartment was a mess, which was quite a feat because he didn't own much to begin with. He wasn't obsessively neat, but he was sporadically careless.

On the one hand he could keep track of countless enemy readouts via satellite, he could juggle four mission files at once without sacrificing a single bathroom break and his memory was borderline photographic (whether he liked it or not). On the other, he could cook the best mac and cheese in the world but leave the brown and crusted tray unwashed for days or even weeks at a time. He could barely make anything that involved the simultaneous use of more than one pan and he'd never think to wash up until he had no clean spoons left. This was why he usually kept his place as sparsely decorated as possible. That way there was less to break or lose or neglect.

But lately, since last leaving headquarters for his enforced, 'no second chances' sabbatical, his functional dysfunction had been thrown out of whack. Now he was parroting the normal lives of the people he knew. He'd sleepwalk through the laundry, cut around the corners of the weekly shop and only pretend to listen to the news every morning. It was all action and no commitment. But at least he was eating properly again.

Leon had almost turned around and walked straight back into headquarters at one point, but he hadn't made it past the first step before realising that anything he said or did would be pointless. He needed to confirm or deny a theory that was either genius or desperation, or maybe both. Necessity was the mother of invention and necessity was the child of longing and hope combined. He'd passed longing a week ago and his hope was hanging by a spider's web. Since this morning he was silently losing his shit.

The morning after his informal meeting with Mitchell he had unpacked the laptop the CIA had given him over a year ago. He had gently peeled back the bubble wrap, lifted it out of its box and hastily leafed through the instructions. Behind drawn curtains he had swallowed every byte of information the CIA's archives had produced until he was both bloated and damn confused. His pursuit of the truth had brought him to this static point where he was posed at the starting block awaiting the roar of the pistol that will either set him free or blow his head off.

For the next four days he had spent nearly every hour by his phone. Tess's walks were getting shorter and the treats he gave her were becoming larger and richer as a form of apology. She hadn't complained, but her stomach was definitely getting rounder. And all he had to show for it was a pile of circumstantial evidence so full of holes that he'd fall right through it.

There was a traitor in the CIA and he'd proven that so far. But 'Martin Scarlatti' was still a digital ghost, a name and number in cyber space. A single piece was missing, a piece that he needed if he was to have anything real to present to Mitchell and Harris. Unfortunately that piece was out of his hands. He had to wait for a contact at the department of records in France to come through for him since he was barred from accessing the information he needed.

Leon had called Jean Dumont, the French agent that had taken care of him and Ashley after their blood drenched tour of Spain's darkest and deadliest backwaters. The assistance Leon had provided with Dumont's satellite photographs had been invaluable, cracking the Frenchman's assignment wide open like a walnut. Pooling all his charm and guile into the phone call, Leon had claimed the favour back. Agent Dumont had been indignant, but his curiosity had reeled him in. Leon's request had been vague, but precise enough for his needs.

Now for the hard part. He had to wait.

Pushing the old, glass doors open with the tip of her nose, Tess made her way onto the balcony, stopping at his feet and panting in the steely tang of the night air. Her body felt warm against his leg and her tail beat at his feet as she stared up at him with dark eyes that caught the moon. Leon smiled down at her and slowly squatted towards the floor, feeling the freezing metal of the balcony floor through his jeans. Tess growled under her breath as he rubbed her ears.

Since the President's dinner Leon had fallen asleep like clockwork every single, solitary evening; his eyelids descending and rising with the sun. He was getting a solid four or five hours of solid shut-eye a day now. He was almost...normal. Refreshed, as though he'd been dipped naked into a lake of frosty water, he'd wake and go about his day without the need of tongue-scolding coffee or tasteless energy-bars. No struggling, no twisting and turning; just a switch that turned him on and off every day like a programmed timer on a piece of machinery.

Inevitably there was one catch. He hadn't dreamed for weeks either. The nights brought him nothing but the soundless, black abyss of sleep. No sunshine, no music, no dancing. No Ada. It was a hell of a choice to make. Health and a good nights sleep or sickening insomnia followed by dreams that left him breathless.

'I never thought I'd say this,' Leon murmured into one of Tess' floppy ears as she dozed against his leg, 'but I miss waking up in a sweat. I miss being kicked around in my sleep. And I miss her. What a joke, huh?'

His dog rolled her eyes towards him at the sound of his voice. She barked and slumped inelegantly onto her back waving her paw at him. Her pink tongue flopped out from her mouth and she sniffled.

'You want me to just shut up and rub your stomach?'

She barked again before sneezing and spraying a mist of 'odour du dog' onto his lap.

Leon wrinkled his nose, 'Fair enough. But when this is over, you're having a close encounter with a tub of soapy, hot water.'

Her front paws scratched at the cotton of his jeans as she flew to her feet, her backside a little slower than her front so she ended up scuttling sideways like a drunken poodle. Tess yelped, her barks becoming louder as she vanished into the black-hole of his apartment.

'Okay. Geez. I didn't know you'd take it that badly. I'll be more sensitive next time.'

He stood and followed her in, almost tripping on the chair she'd upturned during her graceless scrambling. Leon kicked the floor switch of the tall lamp in the corner and blinked at the downpour of warm, fluid light that rippled against the walls. Under the racket of his dog's barking he could hear the slow, strutting guitar of Nirvana's 'Come as You Are' creeping out of his vibrating cell phone. His breathing ceased as he stumbled into the thick gloom.

He hushed Tess and snatched the shuddering phone from the table, glaring at the display expectantly. The number wasn't familiar to him. Even as he patted her head, Tess continued her screaming match with the offending ringtone of the handset. Leon accepted the call and the apartment instantly plunged into silence.

'You see this is why I disconnected the doorbell,' he hissed at the now angelic and silent dog before lifting the phone to his ear, 'Hello?'

'Is that Mr Kennedy?' a feminine voice enquired.

'Yeah it is,' he replied as he leant his hip against the table, 'Who's calling?'

'I'm calling from the Washington branch of the Department of Motor Vehicles regarding the points on your license and your unpaid parking tickets.'

'What parking tickets?'

A heavy sigh followed, 'We've sent you several reminders Mr Kennedy.'

Leon's eyebrows shot up so far that his eyes began to sting, 'I'm afraid I have no idea what you're talking about. Are you sure you have the right Kennedy?'

'I don't make mistakes Mr Kennedy. According to my computer screen you owe the state upwards of seven hundred and fifty dollars.'

'Seven hundred...?' he parroted right back to her as if it made any difference, 'If you don't make mistakes Ma'am I think your computer has.'

His car was Government Issue and he'd never so much as dinged it on a parking meter. His license was spotless and he was insanely proud of that.

'Are you Leon Scott Kennedy, aged twenty seven and born on the eighth of July in New York City?' Her voice was ripe with condescension as though she'd been through this script a hundred times before and he was the one who hadn't learned the right lines.

'Yeah I am, but I don't...'

'And is this the same Leon Kennedy that attended Westmoor School for Boys till the age of eighteen?' the woman's voice adopted a nasal tone that made his ears buzz, 'The same Leon Kennedy that dressed his six year old sister up as the Green Goblin on Halloween despite the fact that she had asked to go as Cinderella? The same Leon Kennedy that misread the face painting instructions and caused his sister to have green skin till Christmas?'

'Hold on! That was an accident and I only....' Leon paused for a moment and then stuck his tongue out to trace the corner of his mouth, 'What's the model of my car and its license plate number?'

Her answer was ten seconds of static before she finally replied, 'You're a jerk.'

Smirking, he flopped comfortably into an armchair and his frown instantly softened, 'You've just called to torment me haven't you?'

Hannah Kennedy's sparkling, liquid voice declared, 'It's no more than you deserve. You never call, you never write, you never visit.'

'You're in Ireland.'

'And you work for the President. Can't you take Air-force One for a little joyride across the Atlantic?'

'I could, but I'd be fired.'

She gave a dramatic sigh, 'Well if you want to be difficult about it, I'll have to wait till Thanksgiving. You do have time off on Thanksgiving don't you?'

'I'm not sure yet.'

He could picture her rolling her grey eyes at him.

'Please don't be like that Hannah.'

'I'm just the warm-up round until Mom finds out.'

'I'm aware of that. _Painfully_ aware,' Leon rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

Out of the corner of his vision Tess wandered off in the direction of his room, her head hung in exhaustion and her tail low but swaying.

'Am I keeping you from something?' his sister asked cautiously, 'You sounded like you were expecting someone else when you answered the phone.'

'Don't worry. When I want to get rid of you I'll just hang up. It's gotta be late where you are?'

'Matt took me to a piano recital with a pack of his lawyer buddies. We managed to duck out early. It's fun being pregnant,' she giggled softly to herself, 'I'm not even showing yet but the minute someone finds out you're expecting they can't do enough for you. I just have to look like I'm about to faint and I can get out of anything.'

'Typical. Pretending to be ill just like when we were kids.'

'I can't believe you're still jealous that Mom believed me, but always knew when you were faking. And I _am_ suffering, thank you. I'm bloated, nauseous and sweaty, and this is on a good day. I'm having trouble sleeping,' she yawned into the phone, 'Plus it's been so grey here lately that I don't think I've seen a peep of the sun in over five days. I've got Mom calling every day trying to get me to book a session with an obstetrician she knows in LA but I'm growing kinda fond of Dr Baker. She's my kind of woman; a straight shooter, totally professional and to-the-point. I didn't even feel embarrassed talking to her about the discolouration of my...'

Leon sat up sharply, 'Okay...there can only be a handful of things that you're going to say next and I'd rather not hear any of them. I haven't even had dinner yet.'

'Oh come on!' Hannah's voice reached a deafening pitch, 'You're a guy who's seen autopsies firsthand, which I find absolutely freakish. I can't even sit through an episode of CSI. But when a woman wants to talk about a perfectly natural aspect of life you, you big meat head, freak out? And you call me crazy?'

'So I'm nuts if I don't want to talk about my sister's reproductive organs and bodily fluids?'

'It's not just you. Mom thinks that kind of talk is vulgar and Matt gets the "deer in the headlights" look every time I say "pap smear".'

'The guy's a lawyer,' he said with a glib smile in anticipation of her reaction, 'Try paying him a hundred bucks an hour, then he'll listen. Probably take notes too.'

'Well Matt's right here if you want to say hello and share your insightful comments,' Hannah breathed knowingly.

'Depends. Has he been out in the streets marauding for flesh yet? Because he's not so friendly when he's hungry.'

'Don't think I won't board a plane and come over there to deal with you,' she growled.

'Threatening a federal officer is a crime Hannah. And I'm kidding. Tell him I said "Hi".'

She gave a muffled shout to her husband and Leon heard a distinctly unenthusiastic grunt in the background before Hannah returned and directed her voice back into the phone, 'Matt says "Hi" back.'

'Uh-huh?' He nestled into the chair, rubbing his back against the rough upholstery to dispel a troublesome itch between his shoulders, 'How's he taking impending fatherhood?'

'In his stride. He's so calm about it that it makes me sick....yes Matt we're talking about you,' his sister called out past the phone to her husband.

'What did your doctor tell you?'

'That the baby is in perfect health. I too am healthy and able, but Matt is refusing to eat at the table with me anymore because I've become addicted to pickled eggs and marmalade.'

'Together?' he exclaimed, restraining his gag reflex.

'No Leon. That would be disgusting. The marmalade is just a palate cleanser. Didn't Mom teach you anything?' Hannah replied patiently with the voice she'd use to reprimand an excitable toddler. Then she took a quick breath, 'I had my ultrasound over the weekend. We got to see the baby.'

Leon smiled at the rosy pride in his sister's voice and hooked his knees over the arm of the chair.

'That's great Hannah,' he said softly.

'No, it was galaxies beyond great. I have the photo they gave us. I'll e-mail it to you tonight. Not that there's a lot to see. It just looks like this weird shrimp, but I can tell that the kid takes after our side of the family.'

'A shrimp?' he laughed, 'Lucky him.'

'Yeah...Mom's probably going to put the picture up on the front page of the family newsletter...' Hannah's enthusiasm dissipated suddenly, 'Wait one tiny minute. Why do you think that the baby's a boy?'

It had been an innocent slip of the tongue but his sister didn't let anything go, 'I...what?'

'What? Don't "what?" me. You said "him". I heard you.'

'I...I don't know. Honestly. It just came out.' Leon replied casually, though his gut churned at his slip up, 'There's a fifty-fifty chance that I'm right though. Am I?' he continued with a grin.

Hannah huffed, 'Well you are right. Thanks for spoiling the surprise.'

Leon pumped his fist into the air in celebration. It wasn't everyday that his sister declared him right about anything and he wanted to rub her face in it just a little. But his arm stopped half-extended in the air as if awaiting a phantom high-five.

'Hannah, are you planning to name him "Nathan"...after Dad?' he asked hesitantly, unsure of whether he really wanted to know.

'Yeah. I've been thinking about it...How did you know that?' she added with a whisper of amazement, 'I know I always make fun of your job, Mr Secret Agent Man, but have you...have you bugged my apartment?'

'No. But thanks for the idea,' he tried to tease her but his voice fell flat.

'Honestly, how did you know that? I haven't even told Mom yet.'

'Lucky guess,' he replied dully.

'You're hiding something and I want to know what it is. I don't know why I put up with you. Even with an ocean between us you still get on my last nerve.'

She meant it, he realised that, but there wasn't as much as a crumb of discomfort from knowing. His relationship with her was undemanding but also honest. For the longest while, after he'd navigated the sudden bump of adolescence, he had concluded that his sister would be the first and probably only one of them to marry and have children. She was the heart of his family, the mediator and the central axis of their lineage. Without her he truly feared that the rest of them would disintegrate and drift away from each other.

'If you can stand me then a new born shouldn't give you any trouble,' he reasoned with her, 'You're going to make a pretty formidable mother, you know that?'

She didn't answer right away and Leon had a feeling that she was smiling, if only a little, on the other end of the phone. He could hear the rush of her breathing as she exhaled through her nose. The sound became deeper before she coughed up a brisk laugh, 'Yep. I know it... Thanks for saying that Leon. And what about you, huh?'

'You want to know if I think I'd make a good mom?'

She clicked her tongue against her teeth impatiently, 'No. I've just always thought that maybe I'd be able to add "Super Aunt" to my résumé one day.'

'And you want me to accommodate you?'

'Matt doesn't have any brothers or sisters. You're my only avenue.'

'So you turn to me in desperation? Makes me feel damn special,' he chuckled in disbelief, 'I thought I'd gotten used to how demanding you are. But obviously not.'

'I'm not demanding. I'm forthright. And I'm out of time. I've gotta go. Think about what I've said,' his sister ordered him, 'Oh and give Mom a call before she sends a team of bloodhounds after you.'

'Anything else?'

'Just come home. Soon. I miss you.'

He made a solemn promise to do that and switched the phone off, staring at the glowing face of the handset until it extinguished. Leon tossed the phone onto the nearby side table and it skid soundlessly along the wood. Then he thought systematically, just like he'd been trained to do since he was kid. As he'd said before there had been a fifty percent chance that he'd guess the sex of his sister's baby correctly and it's not uncommon for people to name their kids after their grandparents. Leon had actually been given his middle name in honour of his great grandfather on his Dad's side. It was a family tradition. Sort of. So it all added up. It was probably nothing more than a coincidence.

_Then why are you sitting in the dark and staring at the wall?_

It wasn't the first time his dreams had hit dead centre on the target of reality. Repressed memories were one thing, but these were things that hadn't already happened. Then there were those sensations that he couldn't explain, such as the heightened sting of awareness that rendered the real world lukewarm and empty. And there was that kiss. The one that licked icicles along his lips, melting into the taste of winter before it gave way to spring. A transformation was suspended in his dreams and in his body; a clear, pale frost like a carpet of diamonds was waiting to break. He was being held back for something but he didn't know what it was, so instead he wandered around without a purpose spreading ice throughout his world and bringing it to a standstill. He needed an ice breaker. Fast. If his dreams had predicted one thing correctly then perhaps...

Leon groaned and jumped to his feet. With more force than was wise he threw the windows to the balcony shut, remembering his discarded mug but not caring. Making sure that his phone's battery was charged enough to last the night, he turned off some of the lights and let the incoming night swallow his apartment. He kicked his shoes off and swung the bedroom door behind him. It bounced with force against the doorframe but not enough to close completely.

Tess glanced up from her space on the rug in the corner, glared at him through one eye and then lowered her head, tucking her front paws under her chin.

'Sorry,' he muttered with a sleepy smile, 'But I just found out that I might be better suited to a job as a carnival psychic.'

He tugged his jeans off and backed onto his bed till his head found the pillow. His chest shuddered as he breathed and his eyes were fixed on the ceiling. Despite his body pleading for sleep, Leon fought the urge to close his eyes and surrender to threats of headaches and nausea. He dreaded the emptiness of sleep now. So he thought about Scarlatti, Lazarus, Zoë and Umbrella. He built the blocks up into a hundred different stories and scenarios. Some were grotesque, some almost beautiful but all of them could be as true to life as the other.

Throughout this he could feel his body sinking into the mattress like it was made of warm sand. Glancing up through half-closed eyelids he caught the first droplets of daylight spreading over the ceiling like an incoming tide of golden light. He blinked and realised that he must have been awake all night, his eyelids falling and rising restlessly like shutters against an open window. The darkness had stolen away the hours as his mind had run itself into the ground.

As dawn ambushed him and set his bedroom on fire, he covered his eyes with his hands and rubbed them vigorously. Distantly he was aware of the light sound of water coming from the distance. Maybe the thick rainclouds above Washington had finally broken. Leon let the fresh sound soothe him for a few moments as it washed away the cobwebs.

Groaning noisily he grabbed a fistful of the blanket and was about to tear it away when he stopped. He struggled into sitting position, his eyes snapping open far too quickly and sending his vision into a tailspin around the room. In one dizzy swoop he took in the washed-out blue colour on the walls, the blurry paintings of violet flowers hanging beside a mahogany wardrobe and a vanity besieged by a dozen colourful containers.

And that sound; it wasn't rain. Someone was running water behind the closed door. Leon braced his hands either side of his body and scraped his fingertips against the unfamiliarly fluffy sheets of the strange, sleep-tossed bed.

Tess was AWOL. His room, his posters, his notes and his clothes were all gone. His shirt was missing and his jeans were no longer hanging off the bedpost. He'd tumbled half-clothed into his bed...hadn't he? Beneath the sheets he was wearing nothing except a pair of green, polka-dot boxers that he couldn't remember ever buying. And once again his body was reacting to that anti-reality, those dreams where the simplest of pleasures were served on the rocks with a twist.

The persistent shower of water in the other room dribbled away and the drain gargled nosily. He turned to the white door and heard the soft padding of bare feet approach it from behind. His shoulders tensed as he watched the handle twist and the door arch open slowly, a light swell of steam fragranced with lavender emerging from the room.

Ada Wong didn't see him at first, or at least she made no indication that she had noticed his slack-jawed gaping from the other end of the room. Her gaze was lowered to the carpet but her attention was a speck in the distance; she was lost to herself. He recognised that look. Kicking the door shut behind her, she rubbed her damp hair with an angel-white towel making spiky, black strands stick up in all directions. Another larger towel was entwined around her body, its frayed ends tickling her knees. Her skin blushed red from the hot kiss of the shower and clusters of water drops beaded along her shoulders before slipping behind the ends of the towel and down into the slope between her breasts. The frothy remnants of shower foam gathered at her slender ankles and her cute toenails were painted cherry-red; he could barely keep his eyes off them.

Suddenly saying that he'd missed her became a galactic understatement. His heart told him so by hammering at his ribcage as if it was a metal ball and his body was a pinball machine. Ada glanced up suddenly with a smile as fresh as a clear, blue ocean. He felt completely thrown by her reaction but couldn't help mirror her smile.

'Good morning,' she breathed sleepily, 'I thought you'd be out of it till noon. I was going to wake you but...I knew you'd appreciate the rest,' she balled the smaller towel up in her hands and threw it onto a nearby wooden chair.

He swallowed hard, leaving his tongue a dry and swollen mass in the back of his mouth. All he could do was nod and drag his eyes away from her sleek thighs, which became harder the closer she came. She stretched her arms languidly above her head as she strolled up to the bed. In one effortless movement she kneeled onto the mattress and edged forwards to reach his side, the towel sliding higher all the while.

Ada's feline eyes skimmed his chest and lapped up the sight of him, beginning where his fingers were knotted tightly around the bed sheets at his lap and tiptoeing up to the tightly bunched muscles of his shoulders. She smiled slowly, a rich curling of her lips when she reached his eyes. He felt it like a thousand kisses. The smell of her spiced skin was like freshly baked cinnamon bread. She straightened her back and placed her hands firmly onto his shoulders before swinging her left leg over his lap and settling on top of him. Leon's hands flew to her waist instinctively to make room. The gathering warmth of her beautiful body made sweat melt through the pores of his skin. The fabric of the towel strained as she shifted closer. She wiggled against his hips a little to get comfortable and he bit his tongue. Then she waited, staring at him and saying nothing. She knew he was shell-shocked and she wanted to make him suffer just a little bit.

Suddenly she vigorously shook her sopping wet hair, spraying him with cold water and waking him up. Her ensuing laughter, loud and crisp, made him grin until his cheeks ached. He blinked up at her and chuckled with delight, the tension and fear he had felt was instantly shattered.

And all he could think, over and over again, was 'God, I hope I never wake up from this one.'

Ada whimpered his name; it was less a word and more of a demand.

'Kiss me,' she insisted, sitting up to cup his face with one hand and comb her nails through his hair with the other, 'You haven't kissed me.'

She knew what he wanted and she didn't pretend otherwise. She took pride in her intuition. But something had changed. Ada was open to him, drawing him in with no sign of pulling back, at least not yet.

'No. Because you're gonna disappear again if I kiss you, aren't you?' he told her. He was doing his best to sound serious but he had a feverish smile on his face. From her half-smile he could tell she thought he was teasing her when in fact he was being more honest with her than he'd ever had the guts to be with anyone else. He sighed and tried to explain, 'This is too good. I don't deserve... I'll wake up and you won't be here if I...'

She hushed him, her palm pressing against his half-open mouth and he tasted the spicy flavour of her skin. She waited a few moments, easing the pressure of her fingers on his lips and testing his silence. Diving down, Ada tore her hand away and replaced it with her mouth. Leon approved of the substitution. He kissed her back and brought his hands to her lower back to crush her chest against his body. She brushed her tongue against the inside of his top lip and purred her delight into his mouth.

The sharp taste of toothpaste and morning sex was soaking his lips as they kissed. She was good, so damn good in fact that every second without her bare skin on his was agony. With measured and deft movements he reached for the knot that held her towel in place. His one and only thought was to unwrap her like the perfect birthday gift.

He groaned when she pulled away and pushed him roughly against the hard ridge of the bed-head.

'I'm still here,' she said between gasps, shooting him a confident smile, 'I didn't go anywhere. I'm still right here Leon. Satisfied?'

His relief was so powerful that he had to bite his lip to keep from yelling at the top of his lungs and rolling her onto the mattress to show her how happy he was.

Leon's eyes trailed the swelling droplets of water that bloomed at the tips of her hair and fell like rain onto her shoulders, 'I've missed being able to look at you like this.'

Her eyebrows curled together, 'I was only in the shower for twenty minutes.'

'It feels like I've been waiting a hell of a lot longer than that.'

Taking in the most perfect of views, he tried to fill in the cavernous space between kisses. Things must have progressed after their impromptu date at The Golden Note; hours, days and months passing as they mixed their time, their habits and their lives like lovers always did.

_Lovers? Is that what this is? _

There was certainly a familiarity here.

_That's putting it mildly._

When she looked at him there was expectation and confidence; there was need. Wherever they were this wasn't their first time, or their second or third. She stirred against his chest and found her way up to his lips. He kissed her forehead, brushing his bottom lip along her nose before his mouth locked against hers again. A pleasant sensation tumbled through his body as they lay curled on the mattress. The circulation in his left leg cut off as he twisted over to accommodate her, but to hell with it. He couldn't care less. Her quiet sobs every time he pulled away, the rising rate of her breathing, the clumsy trembling of her body when he gently pinched her waist; he gloried in her and studied her till he almost forgot where and what they were. Their room, their bed, them, together.

In his mind it was pretty straightforward; just two dots, a line from him to her. She was the most captivating woman he'd ever met. He'd always wanted her. It would be pointless to deny it. He'd considered it, fought it, indulged in it and now he could live it; no consequences.

A groan quaked through his chest as Ada's butterfly kisses landed one by one along his collar bone. Strands of her wet hair tickled his nose as he angled his face towards her.

Perhaps this was what the past few weeks had been building too. For years thoughts of her had consumed his life, his relationships and his work. If a blaze of passion could burn away the lingering vines of unresolved lust then he could start again. He'd already learnt to trust her, to see her as a partner and even a friend when it suited her, so maybe next time the sun rose he could wake up and move on. He could let her go.

Ada hummed, rubbing her lips together as she rose on her knees and towered over him. Then she closed her eyes and fell back onto her bottom so that she sat between his splayed legs. With a velvety moan she licked her lips as though she'd just finished a satisfying meal. She opened her eyes suddenly and pirouetted around to stare at the door.

'Did you hear that noise?' she asked, climbing to her knees again without bothering to rearrange the towel that was slipping dangerously low and revealing the swell of her breasts.

'Nope,' Leon quickly glanced at the door then back to Ada, 'I didn't hear anything...except those noises you were making. Come here, I wanna hear them again,' he reached out for her.

Ada laughed and slapped his outstretched fingers away, 'Nice try Agent Kennedy. A very nice try.'

'You're the sly one,' he argued back playfully, 'You started it.'

'But we can't stay in bed all day.'

'Says who?'

'Says me. If you wanted this so badly then you should have woken up earlier. We both know that if we start this now then it won't stop till dinnertime.'

'Can you think of a better way to work up an appetite?' he grinned whilst watching her crawl backwards along the mattress.

Leon sat up, hurling the sheets to the floor, and darted forwards with an outreached hand. He caught up with her, his fingers wrapping around her wrists and coaxing her back to him.

'Leon...'

Nodding towards the clock beside the bed he interrupted her, 'It's only five past ten. What's the big rush?'

'Leon...Please. We can't...'

'Why not?' he whispered, moving closer and shining his wide-eyes onto her face, 'What's so important that you're gonna abandon me?'

She narrowed her eyes and gave a frustrated huff. He was trying to manipulate her and she knew it. Nevertheless, her resistance was weakening; he saw it in her eyes. Then she lifted her hand and her thumb slowly circled the hollow at the corner of his mouth. It was a 'yes' more powerful than the word itself. Grasping the moment, he leaned closer for another long, ravishing kiss. But was thrown backwards by a shiny blink of yellow light.

It was like hitting a brick wall.

Her hand was on his chin and just inches below his eye was a plain and pale band of gold. Weaving her fingers around his, he held her hand up to study the ring. Then his eyes were drawn from the narrow loop on her finger to the matching, wider strip that belonged to him.

He dropped her hand, but not deliberately; she had just slipped from his limp fingers.

_We're...married? She...she's my... But I thought that...Wow._

Tilting her head as she watched him, Ada remained silent. She waited patiently as her body cooled against the morning breeze.

He had to find something...anything to say to her, 'Sorry. I just....' his voice sounded almost pained, 'I don't know what...I've never even thought about...'

He was choking on the words but they were the truth. Because of every single twisted thing they'd been through the thought of doing anything more than holding her in his arms, kissing her senseless and making love to her until they collapsed in a boneless heap was something his mind hadn't contemplated, at least till now. The idea was mystifying; it was like imagining what lay at the edge of the universe. And by all rights this fantasy should hurt and it should punish him with the obvious small-print clause that when he woke up he'd never get this for real.

And who said this was what he wanted? Why the hell was he here?

'Never thought about what?' Ada asked sceptically.

Leon withdrew to the head of the bed. His shoulder was half-turned to her as he vigorously rubbed his hands together, wincing as the gold ring caught on his skin and pinched him.

'It doesn't the matter. Just forget about it,' he said, turning back to her for what he hoped was long enough to soothe whatever suspicions she might be cultivating.

If she was troubled by his behaviour then she kept it to herself, 'Fair enough.'

As he looked away again he felt the mattress shift when she climbed off without further verbal comment. But she didn't leave without making a statement of her own. She tugged the towel from her body, flicking it away to lie on the chair with its smaller twin. The sweep of her back, ending in soft curves, was a message. That towel was the gauntlet she'd thrown down. She was daring him to seize the untouchable, to entertain her by trying to capture what she'd already promised him. Or she was showing him what he was missing?

Then it was over; she threw a red robe around her shoulders and slid her slender arms into its sleeves.

Tightening the belt around her waist, she calmly turned back to him. Leon's tension drifted as her look ignited a thousand small fires along his spine. He couldn't hold her gaze for long because a single question was distracting him. Why would Ada marry him, even in his dreams? He had a feeling that beautiful butterflies didn't like being pinned down, and yet she seemed happy. She wasn't so aloof and she didn't tense up whenever he looked at her as if she was waiting for some kind of attack whether physical, verbal or emotional.

Ada shocked him awake when she threw a navy robe onto his lap, 'You may as well get up, seeing as you're awake now anyway,' she shot him a sly look, 'And to think you promised me you'd take it easy today.'

She didn't look back as she opened the door and walked out, leaving the door only halfway shut.

_Let's think about this, Leon. You're married. You're married to Ada Wong. Is that such a bad thing? She's crazy about you._

His lips twitched into something a whisper away from a smile.

_She's crazy about __**me**__._

Leon kicked the quilt out away from his feet and stood. He scratched his chest and chewed on an awkward yawn. With the robe around his body, he shuffled slowly to the door after Ada. Perhaps he could tempt her back to bed, or maybe get her to agree to share a shower with him.

He emerged in a wide hallway with four similar doors lined along it at regular intervals. There was a vase of tall daisies and sunflowers on a small, oak table, their stems bending towards the light beams from the small window at the end of the corridor. They dusted the air with pollen and the leaves were plump. There were stairs with bold oak banisters leading down to the ground floor. It was spacious, clean and well looked after. It felt 'lived in', filled with the warmth generated from human interaction. It was a world away from his place in DC.

Before he could inspect the hall further he heard Ada's voice. The woven carpet was rough against his feet as he followed the muffled sound. When he reached the door further down the hall something loud and familiar grabbed hold of him: Ada's laugh.

Leon stopped with his hand cupping the door handle. He smiled, pleased that the sound still resonated through him like it had during his last dream. This waking dream was by far the most normal and the most bizarre all at once, but he couldn't waste it. He'd never turned down an adventure, and what could be more dangerous than being married to an assassin who could kill you five different ways armed only with a paperclip?

He chuckled, sweeping his nerves to the far reaches of his conscious mind. He turned the handle and felt the heavy door swing on its hinges. Stepping into the room the first thing he saw was Ada crouched to the floor, her voice relaxed and deep as she spoke with a figure that was obscured by her body. She suddenly leaned forwards and pulled her smaller companion forwards and into a fierce hug. Then she stood and Leon grabbed the doorframe beside him in a crushing grip.

She was holding a child her arms. A small girl, maybe four or five years old, clung to Ada's shoulders. The kid had dark and unruly hair and she wore a yellow and white nightgown. Ada stole a quick kiss of the young girl's cheek making her giggle; the sound was heart stopping.

Slowly the rest of the room came into focus. The walls were yellow and in the centre of the room was a small bed, its mattress bowing under a menagerie of stuffed animals. Abstract children's drawings covered the walls and handmade cards hung like lanterns between the bedposts. His throat tightened and he instinctively dislodged the fuzzy feeling with a sudden cough.

'Daddy!' the girl looked towards him, her eyes lighting up the room like a shooting star.

Ada smiled at him and lowered the child to the ground. The girl's feet had barely touched the floor before she was off like a rocket, propelling herself towards him. Acting totally on autopilot, Leon slid to his knees and met her as she threw herself against his chest with the accuracy of a heat-guided missile.

'_Daddy'? I could barely wrap my head around being married._

Even as an icy sweat beaded along his hairline, he realised that he'd never met a kid as affectionate as her. He was positive about that. Despite her small size she hugged like a strong bear-cub. Locking his arms around her tiny body, he climbed to his feet and bounced her slightly to test her weight. Her smaller face was close to his and now that she was sitting still in his arms he could make out her features. The young girl was missing one of her teeth and the white crown of a new canine was peeking through her pink gums. Her eyes were as deeply green as the buds of leaves. They looked a little like...no, in fact they were almost exactly like Ada's eyes; less guarded and more openly mischievous perhaps but definitely cut from the same jade silk. This girl was the splitting image of her mother.

_Her mother._

He tested the words through his mind, his tongue curling around them behind his closed lips. Ada stood apart from them, simply watching with her arms folded across her chest.

'Good morning Daddy,' the girl lifted her head from his shoulder.

A soft 'Hi,' was all he could manage. Her breath smelled like waffles.

'Look!' she held her petite, clenched fist up less than an inch in front of his nose.

In her hand was a crumpled twenty dollar bill.

'The tooth fairy gave it to me,' she announced proudly.

He gave a low whistle, 'That must have been a pretty big tooth.'

_Twenty bucks for one tooth? I used to get two dollars a week for raking leaves in my neighbour's front yard when I was ten._

'When are we going out? Can we go now?' the girl asked him directing those bright eyes on his.

Leon hesitated, looking to Ada almost desperately while the little girl...his little girl waited for an answer.

'No Little One. Not till seven tonight,' Ada replied calmly.

The girl seemed disappointed but she got over it quickly and turned back to Leon, 'Will we be at the front of the crowd? I want to see the fireworks but I can't reach.'

'It's okay. I'll...put you on my shoulders. How does that sound?' he reassured her cautiously, 'You won't miss a thing, I promise.'

The girl gave him another smile, 'Thanks!'

_That's the patented Kennedy grin all right. I'd recognise it anywhere._

'Do you think they're gonna be really loud?' the child continued, rambling frantically, 'Kelly's taking her doggy but I think the noise is gonna scare him. What if he gets hurt?'

'Well we'll just have to keep a close eye on him and make sure he stays safe,' he rubbed his thumb against her cheek, 'He'll be fine if he's got you to help him.'

She nodded emphatically, 'I'll try.'

'Yeah I know you will.'

He'd always been good with kids, but there was a line between the ones you watched for a few hours and the ones that you knew you'd be watching out for till the day you died. With this in mind, what he was feeling now, from concern to affection, was no surprise. But under the tide of his surprise he'd almost missed the biggest point of all. He'd made her. _They'd_ made her. And she was beautiful.

Ada approached them and reached out for the child. Leon experienced an insane urge not to let go, but he held back the impulse and allowed the girl to go to her mother.

'Come on Sweetheart, you can't stay in your nightgown all day like last time,' Ada pressed a kiss to the girl's hair and placed her onto the floor.

Leaning her face towards him so that her lips hovered over his ear, Ada murmured, 'You gave her twenty dollars Leon?'

'I didn't have any change,' he replied bashfully.

'You're spoiling her,' she kissed him quickly on his bottom lip before taking the girl's hand in hers.

The small child waved as Ada led her deeper into the room. Leon backed off, crossing the threshold. For a solid thirty seconds he stared blankly at the closed door. And then he laughed, a short and delirious sound, before wiping his sweaty forehead with the heels of both hands.

He couldn't believe it. Turning back towards the master bedroom he tried to figure out exactly where this young girl had come from. He'd never seriously imagined having a child; he wouldn't know where to put one for a start. Maybe she was a by-product of the effect of Hannah's pregnancy on his subconscious. He had been envious of his kid sister's growing family, but offspring were off the list. He couldn't afford to be a father because he didn't want to risk letting his own kid down.

Nevertheless, the girl was sweet, bright and considerate; he couldn't forget that. And she was his and Ada's baby. His heart swelled with pride as he closed the bedroom door and only then did it occur to him that he was warming to a child that didn't exist and whose name he didn't even know.

Leon explored the bedroom, treading through it in straight and measured lines as if it were a crime scene. He daren't breathe in case he disturbed something important and precious. He liked the room, the way it smelt like soap and cinnamon, the wide windows that trapped the sunlight and the loose assortment of toiletries, clothing and shoes that suggested exactly how his 'family' lived. But they weren't alive. That was the catch. This bedroom and everything and everyone that moved within it were staging and props scattered around to suggest real life. Only when he awoke again would the curtain be lowered for the final time and he could forget it; he could pray for the luxury of a poor memory.

He decided to take a shower because, dream or not, he smelt like a stale dorito. But something caught his eye. Beside the lamp was a clay tablet about four inches square and painted pink with golden hinges along one side. Its boarder was covered in gold swirls and it seemed to flip open like a greeting card. Leon took it and opened it up, the hinges swinging smoothly to reveal a photograph on one side and an imprint on the other.

The former was a picture of an impossibly adorable baby girl with short, feathery hair and the indentation on the other panel was a tiny handprint. Above the photograph were the words "Mei Li Vanessa Kennedy, six weeks old". He heaved a sigh and traced his fingertips around the shallow grooves of the handprint pressed into the clay, the creases of the short, chubby digits and the curve of the narrow lifeline that arced around her palm.

"Mei Li". It was pretty. Really pretty. At least now he could put an imaginary name to the imaginary face. Leon lifted the photograph back in its place; it clinked against the lamp a little because his hands were shaking.

He wiped his damp palms on his thighs and shuffled into the bathroom. The space was large and opulent, covered in white and purple tiles. He threw the robe off, shoving down his boxers and kicking them aside. Stepping into the cavernous shower he disappeared under the running water for several minutes and let the jet stream obscure him. Blistering shards of water covered his face, weighing down his eyelids and filling his nostrils and throat with steam. He pressed his forearms against the wall and leaned over to offer his bare back to the firm caress of the shower's liquid fingers. With slow rotations he arched the balls of his feet off the cool, tiled floor; his hamstrings felt rusty and swollen.

For the next few moments he took his body on a short test drive, taking a thorough inventory of every scar and blemish, exploring the sharp definition of every muscle. But for the first time in his life a hot shower solved absolutely nothing. He was still so tightly coiled that his molecules felt like they were splitting apart atom by atom. Leon grunted, ruffled his unfamiliarly short hair and shoved the nozzle on the shower from 'on' to 'off'. With methodical care he shaved and combed his hair before replacing the expensive razor and brand new comb in their designated place.

It didn't matter that the face that smiled from the photographs was his or that the cologne was his preferred brand. This was another man's life. He hadn't consciously chosen it or earned it, therefore he was compelled by good manners to treat it carefully and not to risk breaking anything. Without getting too involved he'd leave everything as it was. He pulled on the first set of clothes that fell from the wardrobe; thick, grey jeans and a thin, blue sweater. There was a watch on the vanity in the corner of the room and he slipped it on. Its wide, leather strap was creased and worn to the shape of his wrist.

It was a quarter past eleven in the morning now and the blinds were up in anticipation of the full force of noon. As he tightened the strap of the watch around his arm his attention settled on a large colour photograph that was discretely tucked beside a pot of moisturiser and an elegant, purple perfume bottle. Leon plucked the silver frame from the desktop. Behind its thin glass was a portrait of Ada and the man she'd married. It must have been their wedding reception.

She was wearing an ivory, satin gown. Her shoulders were bare and creamy white, a ruby pendant hung by a spider web thread around her throat. Her hair was shorter in this picture; dark and feathered against her cheek like shadows across the moon. His arms were looped around her waist and her hands were clutching loosely at his shoulders as she gazed up at him. He recognised the deep red walls behind them with their gold lights and lush, decadent artwork; it was The Golden Note jazz club. Their faces were huddled together as they prepared to share a secret. Ada was smiling easily at her new husband, laughing perhaps. He didn't know for sure, but he quickly guessed why they had a candid shot of their wedding reception on display rather than a posed photograph. No carefully arranged portrait could have caught a smile like that. It was the most exquisite thing he'd ever seen. Ada made a beautiful bride.

Leon felt an unpleasant squeezing sensation in his chest as he remembered the way Ada could own a dance floor, how she held his hand, how her breath would hitch for a microsecond when he brushed his lips against the delicate patch of skin where her neck met her shoulder. And from the look on her husband's face in that photograph he was experiencing all of this firsthand and more.

_Wait a second. I'm jealous...of myself? Well that's new._

He replaced the photograph and reached for the second picture that sat at the opposite corner of the dressing table. This image was smaller, newer and in a thick, black frame. It had been taken at night inside a living room or den. There was a soft, yellow glow from the lamps behind a leather sofa. A figure sat on it. It was him. He was wearing casual, grey and white sweats and he was fast asleep, his body slumped in his seat and his head lolling against the back of the couch. A TV remote was hanging out of his open hand and his hair was mussed and uneven. But he wasn't alone. On his lap was his daughter 'Mei Li'.

It felt so strange giving this girl a name in his thoughts. It made her someone to think about, to remember and to make room for in his life.

The girl was about two or three years old in this picture. She was in a yellow nightgown and she was sleeping with her head on his chest. Her tiny hands were bunched up, her cheeks were dark pink and she was drooling onto her nightgown. Leon chuckled. The photograph sure made parenting look deceptively easy.

'I remember taking that photograph,' Ada whispered at his shoulder.

He almost bumped into her when he turned around. He couldn't decide whether she had crept up on him or if he had just been so deeply distracted that he hadn't heard her approach.

Ada was now fully clothed. But his disappointment was eclipsed out by the snug fit of her t-shirt and the black cropped pants that lined her sleek figure. She was holding a cup of coffee. The stout mug was oversized even against her long fingers. She placed it on the dresser. Her eyes were still on the picture as she stepped next to him and rested her head on his arm with an ease and intimacy that made his skin hum.

'I don't think we got more than three hours sleep a night between us that week,' she told him with soft smile, 'Mei was so ill that she could barely breathe during the worst of it and she was always tired, remember? I'd never seen such a strong case of flu. It's funny thinking back on it now, considering who we are, what we do and what we've seen. But at the time we were both so terrified. I suppose it's different when it's your child that's suffering.'

Leon glanced back at the picture, taking in the girl's running nose and the rosy rings around her eyelids, 'She looks lost to the world.'

'Ah, well you found that the only way to distract her was to turn on Sport's Central,' Ada replied fondly and put the frame back on the vanity, 'There must be something about toothless men hitting each other with hockey sticks that soothes her. I went out for a glass of water and returned to find you like this. You both stayed that way until the morning. And I couldn't sleep. I just wanted to stay and watch you.'

Leon gazed at her, his lips softly parted. He recalled the look of muted terror on Ada's face when his young nephew had grasped her hand at his family's barbeque. The birth of their child had affected her profoundly, drawing out the gentler, more affectionate side of her that she usually kept deeply buried under a brittle shell of indifference.

'Where is she now?' he asked hesitantly as she turned to face him again.

Ada ran her palms along his chest before scoring the dents along his abdomen with her fingers, 'Downstairs, playing with her toys. So I give us about five minutes before she gets up and starts wandering around the house looking for trouble. She takes too much after you.'

He choked on a sudden laugh, 'It's all my fault?'

She inched closer until she was almost standing on his toes, 'Glad to see you're taking responsibility for that.'

'I did no such thing,' he raised his hands towards her but stopped and clenched his fists by his sides, 'And you say it like it's a flaw. It's healthy curiosity. It's productive.'

'Healthy? I'll remember that the next time she shoves marshmallows into the toaster.'

'When did she do that?'

'Just this morning. She wanted to toast them.'

'Huh. I guess that has its own clumsy logic.'

She smiled at him, 'She wanted to make breakfast for me. I think she took it very seriously when you told her to take good care of me.'

_The little girl's full of surprises, just like her mother. I suppose it's a blessing that this is a dream; I wouldn't be able to keep up with the two of them._

'You're exhausted,' she abruptly changed the subject.

'I'm okay,' he covered quickly, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands as she picked up the full mug of coffee. The liquid swished against the sides of the cup but never breeched them.

'Here,' Ada lifted it towards his hands, 'You look like you need this more than I do.'

His lips curled upwards uneasily and he squirmed under her scrutiny. She simply stood there watching him, like a doctor making sure that her difficult patient took his medication. Leon lifted the cup to his lips and choked on the smell of roasted beans that wrapped around his face like a thick quilt.

'God that's...that's strong,' he rasped, blinking rapidly as the injection of caffeine saturated his bloodstream and made his head pound, 'I suppose you think that decaf's for wimps.'

'I like my coffee hot and sweet,' she purred as she arched her eyebrow up at him, 'like my men.'

For a moment there was something predatory about the look in her eyes. It licked at him like the tip of a flame before vanishing under a haze of grey smoke.

'Did you want breakfast?' she asked innocently, 'Waffles? Cereal? Toast is out of the question as you can imagine.'

He shook his head, his jaw feeling suddenly numb as he wrenched his eyes away from her.

'You sure?'

'Yeah,' he mumbled, 'I'm all right.'

'And which "all right" is that?' she cupped the coffee mug in her hands and took it away from him. She brought it to her lips, her breath blowing the steam off the top as she spoke, 'Is that the normal kind of "all right" or is it _our_ kind of "all right"?'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

She took her time drinking the coffee, leisurely drawing out her pause to mock his edginess. Then she put the mug onto a thick wicker coaster on the end of the dresser, 'That word doesn't mean anything when you or I say it, Leon. I can take a bullet and still be "all right". You're the same.'

'I can't fault you there,' he conceded smoothly, 'You want to know what I'm feeling? I'm just...'

She tilted her head back and, as the tips of her hair slipped under the collar of her t-shirt, he realised how much longer her hair was in his dream, 'Just what? Tired? Frustrated? Confused?'

'All of the above and then some,' he gave a slight smile.

There was something about the way she was staring at his face that made him want to laugh. She looked so deadly serious, but with her hair damp and her eyes swollen from lack of sleep there was a softness that was at odds with the sharp lines around her mouth. She was like one of those picture puzzles that you could stare at until you went cross-eyed.

_Hmm. I've just compared her to a 'Where's Waldo' book._

He smirked and hung his head.

'What? What are you smiling at?'

'You. You're so sweet,' he told her earnestly.

She flinched as if there was no greater insult.

'I meant your skin,' he amended quickly, 'I've never tasted anything like it.'

She didn't smile, but there was no mistaking the affection in her expression, 'Thank you.'

'For what?'

'Last night.'

'Last night?'

'Yes. For what you did for me. It's been a difficult week for the both of us. I really appreciated the attention Leon.'

Leon lifted his head and gave her his first easy smile of the day.

'I want to make it up to you. Tonight,' Ada distracted him as her hand toyed with the elastic hem of his sweatpants, 'I know you said that I didn't have to. But you know me, Leon. I hate to be in anyone's debt, even if it's yours, my love.'

'Tonight?' he could have sworn that his ears were on fire, 'What are you going to-?'

'It's a surprise of course,' she breathed.

Without another word she pressed a quick kiss to his mouth, her lips settling over his and covering them entirely. He pressed his heels into the floor to keep his balance.

He had planned to take things slowly, though 'planned' was probably the wrong word for the loose and unconnected stream of sultry images that had careened through his mind like a libido-driven locomotive when she had started to kiss him. However, here and now she had chosen the pace and he had agreed to it, mimicking her hands as she tugged at his clothes and thrust her fingers into his hair.

'I've missed you,' she murmured against his mouth, 'I hate spending nights away from you Leon.'

He faltered, stiffening under her lips as his hands lost their strength and co-ordination. He tried to recover, but it was no surprise when Ada caught on to the tiniest of changes in his posture.

Her arms slipped from his body and she wiggled her head away from his neck.

'What?' she asked irritably, her thin, dark eyebrows arching up like the backs of a pair frightened cats.

He stared into her eyes thoughtfully and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, tasting remnants of the lip-gloss she'd left behind.

'Why did you marry me?' he asked.

Her eyes widened and he could see the whites around her pale green irises.

'Excuse me?' she managed after several long seconds.

'Why did you marry me?' he replied slowly and evenly like a teacher quizzing a pupil on long division.

Ada gave him a slow, sumptuous smile, 'Because I was pregnant and hormonal. I would have agreed to anything.'

Leon tilted his head towards her, his expression straight and almost emotionless, 'Really?'

'Of course not. I'm joking,' she forced out a light laugh, 'What's gotten into you?'

'I want a serious answer.'

'Why?'

How could he tell her that he was measuring his own abilities against those of the man she thought he was? That he was measuring her heat and passion against a make-believe meter, trying to predict how he'd measure up as her husband? How could he explain that he wanted to earn her devotion, deserve it and get it on his own terms? As far as she was concerned he was the man that had captured her heart, given her a home and a family and spent night after night rocking her world. She didn't need an explanation, but he sure did.

She kissed his hunched shoulder and placed her palms flat on his chest, her body heavy against his. Their voices were hushed in the empty room as though they expected that someone was around the corner listening.

'Please Ada. Just tell me.'

'What the hell is wrong is with you?' she softened the demand by stroking his cheek with the backs of her fingers, 'You've never asked me that before. What makes you think you need to now? Have I done something or said something to make you-'

'No! It's not you,' he shook his head, 'This is going to sound crazy-'

'Crazier than anything else you've said to me this morning?' she cut in with a cunning curl of her lips, 'Then I'd better brace myself. This is the second time today that you've pulled away from me. If you do it again I might start to feel insecure.'

'I think it'd take much more than that to rock your boat.'

'Usually, yes,' she murmured sleepily, 'But you're my husband. The stakes are very different now.'

It was the first time she'd verbally acknowledged their bond. He caught the concerned look in her eyes, their lids low as she followed the movements of her own fingers across his chest as if the she thought the pain lay in a broken heart and she was trying to fix it with her bare hands.

Leon lifted her chin with his finger and stroked her jaw with his thumb, 'It's not your fault. Seriously. You're the best thing that's ever...You see when I met you I...'

Three shrill beeps interrupted him, and they were followed by another three and then another, the electronic tweets getting sharper and louder by the second. Ada groaned and slid from his arms. She straightened her clothes and snatched open the top draw of the cabinet beside the bed. Then she lifted a small beeper from the tray and pressed the buttons on its face. She glared at the screen on the device as she read the message, her index finger tapping irritably on the plastic case.

He peered over her shoulder to read it, 'What does it say?'

She shook her head slowly before violently throwing the beeper back into the draw and shoving it closed with such a brutal flourish that the lamp on the cabinet toppled to its side.

'Hey,' he reached out for her, 'Hey come on, stop it...What is it?'

Ada threw her hands in the air and quickly side-stepped his advances, 'It's Deputy Director Palmer.'

He didn't recognise the name, 'And? What does he want? What'd he do?'

She was at the wardrobe now, ripping her t-shirt over her head and shuffling through the hangers for another outfit, 'What do you think?' she replied tersely, her head buried behind the wardrobe doors, 'They need me to go back.'

'Back? Back where?'

'This is no time for jokes and more stupid, cryptic questions Leon. I'm not in the mood.'

'That much is obvious,' he replied sarcastically and leaned against the side of the wardrobe, 'You gonna tell me anything or just finish biting my head off?'

The tight lines around her eyes disappeared but she didn't look at him, 'They need me to go back to the agency and go over the report from last week. I can't believe it! I've spent the past month writing that damn thing and another five days revising it. It's self-explanatory. A child could follow it. But apparently it's too complex for those idiots back in Washington!'

_Washington? The agency? _

He and Ada must still be affiliated with the government in this dream.

Ada fumbled with the buttons on her black jacket and slipped into a pair of shoes.

'I can't believe Palmer has the nerve to do this. How can anyone rise so quickly in the ranks of the CIA but be such a moron?' she scowled, 'I swear if he was here right now I'd just snap his little bird neck and have done with it.'

_Well at least I don't have to worry that matrimony has made her lose her edge._

'I think every agent feels that way about their boss at some point in their career,' Leon replied sympathetically, 'I'll drive you up there if you want. I can give you a hand.'

'Then who will take care of Mei Li?' she asked disdainfully, 'I can't bring her down there. The agency frowns on having four year olds present for classified meetings. Just stay with her. I...I need to make a phone call.'

Her frosty tone made the hairs on his neck tremble. Standing in her path right now was the absolute last place he'd be safe, but he didn't want to leave her alone. Ada marched towards the door and left the room. Leon followed after her in an attempt to sweep up the destruction she'd leave in her wake.

He found her in the next room. It was a small study with a wide desk, two chairs and a phone. Tightly crammed book shelves flanked the single, wide window and more photographs littered the table tops. Ada stabbed a number into the phone and turned her back on him. He could only make out a few words but it was obvious that things weren't going very well.

'Daddy? Dad?'

Leon pushed away from the wall and peered over the banisters and down to the foot of the stairs. Mei Li was standing there clutching a large, white teddy bear with a blue ribbon looped around its neck. She waved him down to her.

'Hi Peanut,' he called down to her as quietly as he could, 'You okay?'

'Daddy, I need help. Please.'

He stared back at the study hesitantly, 'Okay. I'll be down in a minute.'

'Daddy now. Please!' she hugged her bear tightly and sent him an irresistible, wide-eyed stare.

_You really are like your mom._

He wiped the smirk from his face and started down the stairs.

When he reached the bottom Mei offered him her hand, 'I wanted juice and I didn't want to bother Mommy. And I can make it myself. But the jug was too big and I made a big mess. But I can't reach the paper towels.'

She led him to the kitchen as she rambled on sweetly, which was just as well because he had no idea where to go. As he listened to her Leon saw that she had a fresh-looking band aid on her knee.

_Accident prone, just like her Old Man. I don't know whether to be proud or really worried._

They reached the spacious kitchen and the young girl pointed up at the puddle of orange juice on the dining table that dripped steadily onto the floor. Beside the table one of the chairs had been pulled out and he guessed that she had been standing on it at the time of the spill.

On the fridge, under a banana shaped magnet was a child's painting. It looked like a blue blob with three stick figures beside it. A family portrait, maybe? Next to that was a long piece of paper marked "errands". Apparently the lawnmower needed to be taken into town and fixed, they needed to buy something to take to the fair on the pier that night and the laundry needed finishing. Leon poked around the kitchen cautiously, opening and closing draws in an attempt to find some paper towels.

His daughter came to his rescue, 'Mommy put them up there.'

'Oh. Thanks,' Leon spotted them in a glass cabinet high above the stove and grabbed a roll.

As he began to slowly mop up the juice he watched Mei Li silently clamber onto the chair beside him, rip off a tiny sheet of paper and catch the drops he'd missed. He watched her out of the corner of his eye. She had this methodical and studious look in her eyes when she was concentrating.

He threw the wet towels into the trashcan and poured her a fresh glass of juice, 'Here you go Sweat-pea.'

'Thank you,' she grinned gleefully and brought the cup to her mouth before all but inhaling the entire thing.

'Wow. You were really thirsty,' he made her another.

'I was playing,' she said simply.

'What were you playing?' he sat down next to her.

'I was a chef in a big restaurant. I was making food for my dollies.'

'A chef, huh? That's quite a difficult job. What were you making?'

'Pasta and tomatoes. Just like the one you made me before.'

'In that case I'm sure your dolls really liked it.'

She giggled suddenly, 'They can't eat. They're not real Daddy!'

His eyebrows shot half an inch up his forehead. He chuckled and rested his head on his hand, 'That's a very good point.'

So the kid was a smartass too. With every passing second he could pick a new way that she reminded him of himself or of Ada. But the whole girl was far greater than the sum of her voice and eyes and smile and laugh. She was unique. She was his daughter and he knew it instinctively.

He heard Ada descending the stairs and as she appeared in the kitchen he knew that her phone call had done nothing to cool her mood. With her hair tied back in smart bun she looked miles away from the mischievous and sexy nymph that had showered him with kisses earlier that morning. She had her coat on and was carrying an overstuffed duffle bag. There was more than just a stack of files and a biro in there. It looked like she was taking a trek across the country, not a few hours at the office. Faltering at the doorway to the kitchen, Ada took a deep breath and steadied her eyes on her family.

'I called the command centre and spoke to Palmer,' she declared almost blankly, 'I have to go back East. There's a flight leaving in a couple of hours. I should be able to make it.'

'East? For how long?' he asked cautiously, knowing he'd hate whatever answer she gave him.

'Another five days...maybe a week.'

_A week?_

Leon was about to reply when Mei burst out with, 'But you only just got back! Mommy you promised! You said we'd go together to the fireworks.'

Ada looked up, her eyes heavy, 'I know Sweetheart and I'm sorry. But I have to go to work now.'

'Tell them "no"!'

'You know that I can't do that,' Ada replied sternly, 'Your father can take you there tonight. You're not going to miss it.'

'Daddy?' Mei Li implored him and Leon's heart sank, 'Make her stay.'

Ada cut him off before he could reason with the child, 'This is not a negotiation-'

'But I wanted you to come too!' the girl insisted boldly, 'I wanted you there!'

'Mei Li, we've talked about this before,' Ada lowered her voice to a level of artificial and dangerous calm, 'Don't shout like that.'

There was a growing hum of tension as the girl decided her next move, taking in her mother's level gaze and the quiver in her voice. But recognising signs was not the same as understanding them. It was clear that she was confused by the tiny fissures of unrest that were pulling her family's weekend to pieces. Mei Li jumped down from the chair and stormed out of the kitchen, leaving her bear lying lopsided on the table.

Ada dropped her case to the floor and rubbed her eyes. Leon tried to catch her eye as he walked over but she seemed more interested in the floor tiles than in him.

'She'll get over it,' he reassured her gently, 'I remember when my sister was six and Alan bought tickets to this ice show at the plaza. It was some big Christmas thing I think. You know, a bunch of adults dressed up like alligators and giant mice to teach little kids how to skate but just end up giving them nightmares,' he grinned hopefully but she didn't react, 'Anyway, Alan's court case overran and he wasn't able to make it. Mom couldn't take her because she had her book club and I was too young to travel alone with her. I'd never seen Hannah cry as hard as she did that day. But about a week latter she discovered show jumping and Alan took her to the riding school just outside the city. I wouldn't be surprised if she hasn't even touched her ice skates since that night. They're probably still gathering dust back in her old room as we speak.'

Ada sighed and rolled her heavy eyes towards him, 'Interesting analogy but it's flawed. Your stepfather didn't let your sister down over and over again. It wasn't his fault that his case overran.'

He sighed, 'My point is that kids are resilient. You're not letting her down.'

'But I am,' she stared at him fiercely, 'I was away for five days Leon. Five days! It was the shortest trip I've had all year but it was still far too long. I barely slept. I couldn't eat. I had to hear that my daughter lost her first tooth over the phone of some dowdy hotel. I've had to wish her a good night via my cell phone in an airport lounge surrounded by a hundred strangers. I missed her third birthday and I was late for her fourth. And it won't be the last time that one of us has to leave for days on end. It's either me in Washington or you in Europe. Sometimes they don't even tell me where they've sent you.'

'And that's your fault? You're not making any sense.'

But she disagreed, spitting back at him, 'Then who else is there to blame? I decided to leave Umbrella. I made this deal with the CIA. I over-stepped my mark and now she suffers for it!'

'I don't see it that way.'

'Of course you don't,' she flashed a bitter smile, 'You're with her more than I am. It's you that she goes to most when she's hurt or when she needs something. She can rely on you, but she's forgetting that she could ever rely on me.'

Leon took her by the shoulders and pulled her a step closer, 'You need to stop blaming yourself. What else could you have done differently today? Or yesterday or years ago for that matter?'

She replied instantly, 'I could have cut my losses and stuck to the world I knew.'

He knew what she was referring to and the idea revolted him.

'You don't mean that. That's not a choice,' he told her vehemently, 'That's "do or die". It's an ultimatum.'

She hesitated right there, her eyes fixed onto his face and her lips parted as they waited for the words to catch up with them. Then she gave up, shaking her head and leaning back to slump defeated against the wall. She was exhausted from too many arguments, most of which she'd been making with herself rather than with him.

'Can't you just quit?' he stepped a little closer, joining her with his back against the wall and turning his head to the side so he could look at her.

'Quit? Sure Leon. Why didn't I think of that?' she cut her gaze away from him, 'Yes that would be wonderful. "Hello Director Palmer, I quit. Thanks for nothing Jackass." Of course then he'd reign in my pardon agreement with the CIA, which would make me a wanted criminal and force me to go into hiding in Mexico. And since I can speak Spanish, Mei loves fajitas and you look fantastic in a sombrero, we'd make the ideal, modern family of fugitives,' she groaned and pounded the wall behind her with clenched fists, 'I thought that...I thought that once Wesker was gone I could...'

'You're not going to get anywhere beating yourself up about this.'

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, seeming not to hear him. Her shoulders were trembling as if every muscle in her body had begun to knot. He felt the powerful urge to hold her. Turning towards her, he slipped his hands under her arms.

Ada's spine stiffened with an almost audible snap and she rolled her shoulders back, 'I'm going to miss my plane.'

And like that his fingers were grasping empty air instead of her body.

'Here. Let me,' he reached past her to grab her bag, pulling the strap from her fingers. She didn't even roll her eyes at his unnecessarily chivalry.

Leon heaved the bag over his shoulder and followed her towards the door. He could make out the hard ridge of the gun holster under her jacket.

_Ada Wong, Working Mom. Who'd have thought?_

'Joan and Mike will be picking you and Mei Li up at seven,' she smoothed her hair with her palm and turned to check that he was listening, 'Make sure she's dressed by then. I laid her clothes out upstairs. They're ironed and ready. Don't let her make a fuss or you'll be late. I've also charged the camera-'

'I'll take plenty of photographs for you,' he grasped at the chance to ease her anxiety, 'I'll even have them indexed and mounted by the time you get home.'

She glanced past him anxiously and nodded towards the door, 'I can't go without trying to talk to her. You know what she's like when she's in a mood. I don't want to leave her like that.'

Leon agreed and walked her out of the kitchen. He started to climb the stairs towards Mei Li's room but turned to find that Ada hadn't followed him. She was standing beside a cupboard in the hallway. The doors of the wardrobe were chipped and seemed at odds with the slicker, modern pieces around the house.

'Aren't you going to...?' he started but she shushed him.

Ada lifted the brass handle on the door and waved him down towards her. When he reached the bottom he heard a wet sniffing sound coming from inside. Ada slowly opened the doors and nudged the coats aside to reveal their heartbroken offspring sitting cross-legged in the corner. Mei Li had retreated to a familiar, dark place to brood alone. With a pout that wasn't going to disappear anytime soon, she was tugging at the front of her t-shirt and slouching miserably.

Despite its height, the cupboard was so narrow that the elf-like girl was squashed inside its frame. She was growing out of her hiding place. He'd have to build her a tree house....well he would if she was real.

Mei Li blinked against the light when she saw them. A couple of tears had left shiny track-lines down her cheeks.

'Come on,' Ada took her small hand to guide her out, 'No tantrums. You're a big girl now.'

To her credit Mei tried to smooth the frown from her face, but her miserable silence remained unbroken.

'Good girl,' Ada curled her index finger along a lock of Mei Li's long hair.

The compliment made no difference; it just dissolved in the air between them. To Leon's disappointment, Mei seemed to shrink back from her mother's touch.

Ada didn't react outwardly to this but he was sure that she couldn't have missed the subtle rejection. She bent her knees and reached eye-level with the child, 'I won't stay a moment longer than necessary,' she promised, 'Take care of your father.'

The girl nodded and edged towards Leon and slipped her chubby fingers into his hand.

As she opened the door Leon slipped the bag from his shoulder and onto hers 'Call me when you reach the airport. Okay?'

She nodded weakly.

Leon lifted Mei up into his arms; it was the only way he knew to cheer her up. They followed Ada to the front yard and waved as she got into her car.

When the dust had settled on the road outside their home, the black jeep ducking over the horizon and out of view, he turned to his sulking daughter whose head was a dull weight on his shoulder, 'Hey, I think you left your teddy bear in the kitchen.'

'Can we go get her?' she asked quietly, 'I don't want her to be lonely.'

'I thought you said she wasn't real,' he said as he kicked the front door closed and carried her towards the kitchen.

'No Daddy,' Mei lifted her head from his shoulder and told him slowly and carefully, 'The dolls aren't real, but my teddy is.'


	13. The Ideal Husband

_Author's Note:__ *Waves*_

_Yes. It's an update. I can hardly believe it myself._

_I didn't intend to finish this story, not because I didn't want to but because I felt that I simply couldn't manage it. But back then I didn't realise that there was something stronger than the pessimistic voice in my head, and that something is all of you. Since taking my hiatus I've had a small but constant stream of PMs and reviews from people asking me to complete Faith. So I caved. Spectacularly._

_I'm infinitely grateful for the encouragement and pestering I've received (you all know who you are!) _

_Please forgive this insane gap between proper updates. I've finished almost the entire story now and I'll be putting up a new chapter every week or so to give me time to write the epilogue. Including this chapter there are five instalments left of this story._

_As for this chapter, I hope it was worth the wait._

_And before I forget- Happy Valentine's Day!_

---

**Chapter 13**

**The Ideal Husband**

'_You see giant proclamations are all very well, but our love is louder than words.'_

_--Bloc Party, Sunday_

'Okay, here we go. "Thank you for purchasing the Shear Deluxe 4000",' Leon muttered, spitting the words out under his breath for the fifth time in an hour as he scuffed his heels across the grass and turned his pink arm away from the glare of the sun, '"For repair instructions turn to page 52. For instructions on dismantling your Shear Deluxe 4000 model to assess the nature of its malfunction, please turn to page 45. Small print. Please note that all oil must be drained from the tank before any major parts are removed."'

_I guess that explains the mess I've made. _

Leon had always thrown himself into his assigned role whenever he was needed; big brother, cop, bodyguard, and now husband and father. It was becoming clear to him that the latter two of those roles were the hardest. They came with the disconcerting sensation he usually got from borrowing another guy's shirt or driving someone else's car. At least when on an assignment from the agency he could follow the defining rule: 'when in doubt, blow it up'. The delicate manoeuvres required to keep a four year old girl happy, to cook, clean and attempt major surgery on a dying machine had kept him busy, making the past few hours soar by. He had almost jumped out of his skin when he'd looked around and saw that the sun had begun to set behind his back.

'"Remove screw A with three inch, long-nose pliers ensuring that the main case bolt is securely fixed above panel B. Unscrew screw A in a counter-clockwise motion to reveal the rotor blades. Remove any residue grease or dirt from the blades with a clean cloth and a light quantity of the enclosed oil. Replace blades",' Leon flipped open the compartments of the long, black toolbox beside him and located the pliers with their viciously serrated edges.

Ada's departure had left a space of dead air around him. As usual she was the only one out of the two of them who knew what was really going on. This was her world. He was just visiting. She needed him to hold the fort and take over their carefully planned weekend, keep their kid in one piece and distract her from the fact that she wasn't going to see her mother for seven days.

After retrieving Mei Li's bear from the kitchen, Leon had suddenly recalled the hastily scrawled note from the fridge. There it was in black and cream. A hideously normal list of errands to test how domesticated Leon S Kennedy could be. The elegant, forward slanting loops were definitely Ada's handwriting. He recognised it from those notes she'd let flutter before him in Spain like a path of feathers. But this piece of paper looked cold and bare without her scarlet lip print at its edge.

The laundry was already crossed off the list, but they still needed to buy 'something' to take to the pier that evening and take the lawnmower into town to be mended. Since he had no idea where he was or where he had to go, Leon had decided to deal with it all from the comfort of his imaginary home. He'd plundered the kitchen and come up with enough ingredients to slap together a carrot cake to take to the fair. Granted he hadn't made one since he was fifteen and even then he'd had Aunt Sarah looking over his shoulder and making fun of his lopsided icing skills. But Mei had been really enthusiastic about the idea.

'Can I make the icing?' she had asked, grabbing the bag of flour off the counter and spilling a great load onto the front of her t-shirt.

'Yeah okay,' he'd laughed, removing the bag from her hands and dusting her off.

'Can I draw a dog on the cake?'

'Fine. A dog it is.'

'Can I lick the spoon?'

'Sure. But only when we're done,' he'd helped her up onto a stool beside the fridge so she could watch and pass him what he needed, 'Just don't tell your mother.'

The kid didn't mind getting her hands dirty, though she was a little haphazard with her concentration. A dozen shards of crunchy shell had fallen into the mixture when she'd smashed the eggs a little too zealously against the edge of the mixing bowl. They'd gotten sticky fishing them out. Forgetting how much honey he had to add, he'd relied on Mei's love of all things golden and just spooned in half a jar to make a shiny heap of gooey sweetness. It had taken three attempts to get it right and the sink had looked ready to cave in under the weight of all the bowls and cutlery they'd used, but they'd done it.

Mei was great company, smart, loud, impatient and she looked up to him with such total and unreserved love that he almost felt like a child himself. He could suddenly recall what it was like when all his father had had to do to make him happy was lift him up and swing him high into the air. It had been his dad's answer for everything and from what Leon could remember it had been the right solution every time. Losing his dad at such a young age had meant that he'd never had to outlive that feeling and he'd never grown to see his father as anything other than his hero. Until recently that is.

After an hour of playing with sugar, butter and powdery coriander that dyed their fingertips red, Leon had told Mei that she made a very good little sous chef.

'What's a sues chef?' she'd blinked up at him whilst spooning the mixture into the cake tin.

'It's sort of like....a chef's assistant,' he'd replied with a smile, standing behind her and helping her scrape the last of the sugary mess into the tin, 'This looks great. Mommy would be proud of you. You've done a good job.'

Mei had fallen strangely quiet then. The sadness was still lingering behind her cheeky smile. She needed her mother.

'What's with that frown?' he had asked her, gently pulling the spoon from her hand and throwing it into the sink that was already overflowing with bowls and pans.

'Nothing,' she had mumbled, rubbing her messy hands on her t-shirt.

Not believing her for a microsecond, Leon had torn off a piece of tissue from the roll of paper towels on the counter and cupped her soft hands in his, 'When I was about your age, my daddy used to go away a lot. He was a soldier so he'd go far away and he even missed Christmas one year. I was so sad and angry when it happened,' he had told her as he softly blotted her grubby fingers, 'But he couldn't choose his trips. He wanted to stay home really badly just like your mom does.'

'Then why doesn't she just stop and come home?' Mei had whimpered, genuinely confused and frustrated.

'It's hard to explain,' he had tried throwing that pseudo-explanation around to buy some time. But Mei Li, like her parents before her, had found that tactic totally lacking.

'Your mom and I have very important jobs. We protect a lot of people, including you, but sometimes it means we have to...give up certain things,' he had continued carefully, 'I know it's not fair, but it doesn't mean that you're not important. Given the choice your mommy would be right here with us. I can guarantee that.'

Mei Li had shrugged and grabbed the jar of honey in both hands, holding it up to the light and watching the gradual rise of the crystalline bubbles suspended within the golden syrup.

'This will take a while to bake,' Leon had carefully slid the tin into the open oven and set the timer, 'Come on. We can get washed up and watch some cartoons.'

Mei Li hadn't spoken much during their hour in front of the TV despite his best efforts to engage her. He'd made her a sandwich, which she'd only eaten half of. She'd rejected his offer to let her sit on his lap, but she had silently crawled up onto his knee ten minutes later to nuzzle against his chest and secretly suck her thumb. Though the cartoon had been a classic (to this day he'd never met anyone who didn't love Daffy Duck) his eyes had drifted away from the TV and to the face of the little girl. He'd stroked her hair and counted the seconds between her hushed breaths until she fell into a soundless sleep. Then he'd pulled her thumb from her mouth and slid her off his lap. She was gorgeous, wrapping her tiny fingers around of his attention even she when doing nothing except simply existing, in the broadest sense of the word anyway.

Leaving her on the couch under a blanket, he had walked around the house, his short tour ending at the glass doors that led into the backyard. He recognised most of the flowers from the time he'd spent in his mother's garden. Smirking involuntarily, he remembered his mother trying to teach him the differences between various types of fern when he was eleven. But all he'd wanted to do at that age was dig for worms and use them to scare his little sister.

The expanse of fresh grass stretched out further than he had expected and tall wooden fences under siege from ivy towered on both sides. Simple boarders of baby's breath and blue bells made a soft fringe around the edge of the wild lawn.

Then he had spied the rusty heap of the lawnmower beside the tool shed at the end of the garden. It was an outdated piece of junk. No wonder the lawn was so woefully undercut. He had taken a look at its battered frame and grabbed the machine by the handle, dragging it to the porch. He had decided not to take it in to be serviced. Screw that, he was a government agent. He could dismantle a Remington shotgun in the dark in less than thirty seconds. He'd fix the lawnmower himself.

_I've had better ideas, that's for sure._

Leon sighed and rubbed his hand over the bridge of his nose. He remembered that his fingers were coated in grease only after the slime had touched his cheek. Cursing out loud, he grabbed the cleanest cloth he could find to wipe the worst to the black grease off his face and neck. He'd practically gutted the thing before realising that he had to drain the oil out first, and now his shirt was ruined.

_What kind of appliance still runs on oil anyway?!_

Scaling his pride like a fifty-foot obstacle, he had searched the kitchen draws and located the loose pages of the instruction manual. At first, the only pages he could locate were the ones in Korean, Spanish and Polish. He had a lot of strengths but translating wasn't one of them. Thanks to the combined influence of Grandpa Mack and Aunt Sarah, he knew every Celtic curse word in existence. That wasn't enough to translate the lawnmower's instructions. But it gave him a broad choice of insults to toss at the hunk of junk at his feet. Eventually he'd found most of the pages written in English.

_Not that it makes any difference when you've got a manual that's about as accessible as 'War and Peace.' _

Leon held the roughly sketched diagram up and compared it to the innards of the lawnmower that were sprawled out in front of him. There was little similarity. The former looked like a regular gardening appliance and the latter resembled the timing device of an atomic bomb. He cautiously lifted one of the lawnmower's metal panels and pressed it to the side of the motor. With a few sharp twists the replacement screws slid into place and held the steel sheet in a vertical position. Leon slowly leaned back and held his breath, corking a gasp of air in the back of his throat. He waited. Nothing happened. He let it out with a soft huff. And then the metal panel shuddered and fell to the floor with a dull thump.

Growling, he ripped open the instructions again only to find that he'd used the wrong screws. After a closer inspection of the pile of metal before him, he realised that the correct bolts had somehow gone missing and taken his patience with them.

'Shit!' he barked, kicking the lawnmower's carcass with such force that it toppled over and crushed a patch of wild daisies.

'In my experience that technique never works,' Nathan Kennedy advised him sagely.

Death had apparently made him Buddha-like, a regular paragon of advice.

'Thanks for the tip, but this technique makes me feel better,' Leon gave the lawnmower another sharp kick in its rear end.

He craned his head back to see his father dressed considerably smarter than before with loafers, a black tie and a pale green shirt.

'Got a special evening planned?'

Without breaking his stride Nathan kicked off his shoes and chose a clean patch of grass to sit on, 'Yeah. Me, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe are going out for cocktails after I've dealt with you.'

'Send them my regards,' Leon replied with a tired smile that barely lifted his drooping eyelids.

'How long have you been at this thing?'

His groan echoed around the garden as he made a show of throwing the instructions into the air and falling onto his back. The manual landed on top of his chest, 'Time has lost all meaning. Do you know how to fix this piece of junk?'

'What makes you think I would?' Nathan asked, sounding baffled.

'You were in the army.'

'Yeah, but I was a logistics specialist not an engineer.'

Leon rolled over to study him, 'They must have taught you a few things about machinery.'

'Of course, but we were never taught how to raise the dead,' he nudged the shell of the lawnmower with his fingers, 'This thing is rusted to hell. You may as well dump it.'

'There has to be something a government agent and ex-soldier could do with this thing,' Leon grumbled to himself, draping his forearms over his eyes.

'What's the big rush Kid? It's just a prehistoric appliance that's seen better days. You've been out in the sun too long.'

Sighing, Leon sat up, 'No. I just thought that maybe I could fix it.'

'Why?'

He sagged forward and brushed his hair from his forehead, 'Because it's what good dads and husbands do.'

Nathan gave his son a hard punch on the shoulder, 'When a husband says he's going outside to fix something you can be damn sure he's just snuck out to the backyard to have a few beers in peace,' he stared back at Leon from a moment before pointing at his face, 'You've got a little something on your chin. Looks like grease.'

'Where?'

'It's...all over you really.'

'Where exactly? Here?' he asked, rubbing the back of his hand over his right cheek, 'Did I get it?'

'Uhh,' Nathan nodded unconvincingly, 'Yeah sure, you got it.'

Then he smiled to himself.

'What?'

'You,' his father shook his head in wonder, 'You were always the messiest kid. We didn't have a garden but somehow you'd always manage to get dirt under your fingernails. It used to drive your mom crazy.'

Leon flexed his grubby fingers and grinned mischievously, 'Still does.'

'There was one incident I'll never forget. You were about a year old,' the creases around Nathan's eyes were drawn tight as a 'far-away' look shrouded his usually sharp, focused eyes, 'It was our guys' night in. Just you, me, your uncle Geoffrey, a few buddies from my unit and a couple of the neighbours who didn't have a TV. We were watching the Superbowl and you were our mascot.'

'Your mascot?' Leon exclaimed, lips curling in anticipation of another forgotten family anecdote, 'What was I?'

'A _cowboy_,' he replied as if the answer was obvious, 'What else would you have been? We were rooting for Dallas to win. I even found you a hat. It was too big for you and kept fallin' down. But you loved it. Then you got into the chips and dip. You smeared red sauce over your face like war paint. Geoffrey almost passed out from laughing. He said you were part cowboy, part Red Indian. I'll never forget when the game ended and Dallas had destroyed the opposition. We were all dancing around the room with you,' he gave a low whistle under his tongue, 'Then of course your mom came home and didn't exactly see the funny side. After she'd cleaned up the mess she didn't speak to me for two days.'

Leon chuckled, the sound so deep in his chest that he became breathless, as he wondered how many stories from his childhood had been lost along with his father. But then his thoughts meandered to a less bittersweet topic, 'Dallas won?' he arched his eyebrow at his father sceptically, 'I thought they lost to the Steelers in '78.'

Nathan's top lip twisted upwards as he regarded his son with a look that was a shade away from mortified, 'No. Pittsburgh beat Dallas 21 to 17 in _1976_. The Dallas Cowboys beat _Denver_ in '78.'

'You sure Dad?'

'Am I _sure_?' he spluttered, 'Course I am. You think I'm senile or something? The one benefit of being dead is that I'm gonna be thirty eight years old forever. I may look older than that but my memory is just as clear-'

'All right. Hey, no offense,' Leon waved his palms outwards to signal the white flag, 'But I think you might be remembering it wrong. I could have sworn that Dallas lost in '78.'

'If you come out of this knowing one thing,' Nathan sighed and crossed his arms over his meaty chest, 'it's that no one knows more about The Cowboys than me.'

'Fine,' Leon surrendered, happily backing away from the subject even though he was still dubious.

He cleared his throat and leaned down to pluck his pliers from the earth, 'So, was fixing Mom's toaster a codeword you used when you wanted to sneak out for a few cold ones?'

His dad glanced away and looked towards the backdoor, his expression deadpan, 'How's fatherhood been treating you?' he asked, breathing deeply but ignoring the question.

Leon felt his poorly aimed attempt at a joke whip back and slap him in the face. His lips curled up in a silent apology.

He rested his tired arms on his knees, his neck bared to the sun as he leaned over, 'She's an amazing kid, but she wears me out. It's like babysitting Road Runner.'

Nathan smiled as he recalled distant memories, 'Being a parent is like being an air traffic controller. You have to be one step ahead all the time to prevent a disaster. Where is the little ankle-biter anyway?'

'She's asleep.'

'Are you sure leaving her alone is such a great idea? When you were a baby you used to stuff coins into your mouth.'

'What?! Actual, real, metal...?'

'Oh yeah. You loved the taste. Pennies, quarters, whatever you could get from my wallet,' Nathan replied fondly, 'If I ever needed spare change I just used to check your diaper.'

Leon recoiled with horror, 'That's disgusting! Besides, Mei Li is four. And I checked on her about a half hour ago....or at least I think it was a half hour. As I said before, this lawnmower is kicking my ass.'

'And before this fiasco? What was it like being called "daddy"?' his father was completely sincere in his inquiry.

He thought back to the small child he'd left inside the house, her laugh that made the air around her sparkle, her eagerness and her impatience with the world that couldn't keep up with her, 'It was exactly the way Hannah described finding out that she was having a baby.'

'And what did she say about it?'

'That it was indescribable,' he smiled broadly, 'I know this is just a dream but Mei Li is like nothing I've ever imagined before. I mean I know kids, but she's...she's mine. She's my kid. I never imagined be able to say something like that.'

'And Ada?'

His grin wilted, 'What about her?'

'She's your wife and has been for at least a few hours. You tell me.'

Leon gazed at the floor, the blades of grass merging into a blank canvas of green, 'About that part of all this... Why am I married to her?'

Nathan's lips twisted as he gawped at him, 'What kind of question is that? You asked, she answered. It's not particle physics.'

'How do you know I was the one that asked?'

'Because you're as old fashioned as I am. Besides, can you see Ada getting down on one knee and proposing?'

'No, but I can't see her saying "yes" to me either. That's my point. A few nights ago I could barely wrap my mind around Ada coming to my home for a meal. And now she's my wife and the mother of my child.'

'So when you woke up with her you... what? Screamed? Ran for your life?'

'No,' he wiped his dirty hands on the front of his pants, 'I kissed her. When I saw her I didn't know that she was my wife. I thought it was just a casual fling that would help me get over her once and for all. But the moment I saw those rings I was paralysed,' he paused and rubbed his forehead with the arm of his shirt, 'Marriage. It's a big commitment.'

'Great deduction Sherlock.'

Leon frowned impatiently, 'Listen, I've already learned that she won't actively try to hurt me and that she may even have an interest in keeping me out of trouble. I'm stretching myself thin to hunt down Scarlatti because I trust her intel. That's it. Game over. I don't want anything else.'

'Then why are you sitting in the dirt and frantically tearing apart a lawnmower?'

'It's nothing crazier than what I've been doing for the past couple of weeks,' he was testy now, wiggling under the spotlight of the sun and the interrogation.

'There are a hundred things you could be doing right now but you're doing this for her,' his father insisted, 'And it's not because of that gold on your finger. You've spent weeks waiting for Ada to prove herself to you and now you want to prove yourself to her. You're not just going through the motions here so don't tell me that you don't want anything else. It's not polite to lie to the dead.'

'Mr Lawrence,' Leon snapped suddenly.

Nathan did a double take, 'Who?'

'Mr Lawrence. My high school art teacher,' he explained, his tone growing more urgent with every word, 'I was fourteen and we had to paint a portrait of a family member. Hannah couldn't sit still long enough for a photograph let alone a sketch. So I dug around in the attic for old photos,' he hesitated, moistening the dry roof of his mouth with his tongue, 'I drew you Dad. I painted you in your military uniform. It took me hours but it gave me my first and only A in that class.'

Leon thought back to how secretly proud he'd been beneath his surly adolescent blushes as Mr Lawrence had held his work up to the class.

'He told me that he hadn't given me the grade because of the quality of the brush work or the composition...' Leon gave a short laugh and hung his head, 'I'd actually given you six fingers on one hand by mistake. But he gave me a top grade because of...because of the feeling in the picture. Because it showed how I felt about you and how idolised you.'

His father's shoulder's sagged and he swallowed noisily as he fought for something to say, 'Your great aunt Judy was a painter.'

'I know. Mom told me,' Leon sighed, 'Dad, you want me to be honest? This past week has destroyed twenty years of fantasy. I can never see you that way ever again and it's hard. It's really hard.'

As Nathan raked his hands through his hair, Leon continued quickly, 'Don't get me wrong, I'm not ashamed of you. Nothing you could do would make me ashamed of you. But it was just easier before.'

'What's this got to do with Ada?' his father asked, an impatient edge to his voice.

'Everything. It took me six years to realise that I love this woman-' Leon flinched at his use of _that_ four letter word and the smug look of "I told ya so" in his father's expression, 'Yes. Fine. I said it. And now that I've admitted it, I'm going to have to spend another decade without her, pretending that I'm okay with it. Sure I can sleep with Ada tonight, but I'm waking up alone, unless my dog has jumped into bed with me. This dream is exactly like that painting. My _life_ is that damn painting. My heart sees one reality, but I'm going to have to live with another sooner or later.'

Nathan exhaled gruffly as he tried to understand his son, 'You think I'm torturing you?'

'No,' Leon replied with a sad smile, 'I just think that you love to dream as much as I do.'

'Daddy?'

Mei Li, her bear trailing behind her in one hand, toddled out of the backdoor. She had small crumbs in the corner of her eyes and her clothes were crumpled. She hadn't stopped to put her shoes back on.

'Hey Sweet pea,' Leon hurriedly cleaned his hands on his sweatshirt before holding out his arm and guiding her to sit beside him.

As he'd suspected, Nathan had checked out once again. Leon didn't have time to wonder when he'd see his own father again because Mei Li was already waddling over with outstretched fingers longing to touch the alien technology in front of her.

'No, no, no. Don't touch it. It's sharp,' he warned her, guiding her hands away from the discarded rotor blades.

'Okay,' she shrugged, picking up one of the bolts instead and threading it through her finger like a giant ring, 'You smell funny.'

Leon rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, 'Yes, I do.'

'What are you doing to the lawnmower?' she let the bolt slide off her finger and onto the grass.

'I'm fixing it for your mommy.'

'But it's still in tiny pieces,' she said, pointing at the debris.

Despite everything he'd said he couldn't help staring at his daughter lovingly. He still felt that he was right, but he figured that he'd have the rest of his life to miss her. Now at least he could spend these precious hours with her.

'It's a work in progress,' he told her, 'Besides, I didn't have my special assistant to help me. And now I do,' he flicked his thumb against her snub nose, painting the tip black, 'Come on Peanut. Pull up a patch of grass and we'll get going.'

Mei Li laughed and threw herself down next to him. She sat there for the next hour, her nose crinkled in confusion as she listened to him and endeavoured to pass him the right tools. And she got it right most of the time, as long as he took a moment to tell her the correct colour (black, yellow or red) and size ('baby sized', 'big', 'even bigger' and 'humungous') of the tools he needed. He'd stopped halfway through to grab a drink and a snack for them both, explaining solemnly to Mei Li that the first rule of completing a task like this was to drink plenty of fluids and eat cookies.

He didn't know how she accomplished it, but despite her not touching the lawnmower, Mei's white t-shirt, face and arms were covered in dirt and oily streaks. She looked like a tiny human-zebra hybrid.

By six in the evening the sun was wrapped in ribbons of red cloud. They were almost done. The lawnmower was as clean as they could have hoped, its blades replaced and its casing screwed on tightly under Mei's curious gaze. Leon gave her a thumbs up and picked up the instruction booklet, wondering if he should burn the offending document and offer it up as a sacrifice to the gods of home repair.

'What's that?' Mei asked, pointing at the flat metal piece that was hiding under the repair manual.

'Oh damn it to-' Leon guiltily bit his tongue.

He'd forgotten to replace one of the inner panels of the lawnmower. He'd have to take the whole thing apart again to fix it and there just wasn't time for that. The damn thing had beaten him.

'Hey Mei Li,' he turned to his daughter, 'Would you like me to take you shopping for a new lawnmower next weekend?'

Mei nodded, her pigtails bouncing, 'Can we get a big one? One that we can ride around on? Kelly's daddy has an orange one and he took us on it yesterday. It was fun. I can buy it. I could pay for it with my tooth money.'

'We'll see,' he chuckled warmly and replied with the universal parental get-out clause.

The glass doors behind them swished open, the clack of smart shoes against the concrete patio followed. Her jacket and gun holster had been removed. Her hair was loose and ruffled by the breeze. Leon had seen her look rumpled and wrung out once before. During the worst of Raccoon City she'd barely been able to stand but, like now, she'd had this air of rock-solid control and dignity that could make a torn dress and frayed stockings look utterly powerful.

'What have you two been doing?' Ada asked, staring at Mei Li. The whites of her eyes were shining as she took in the mess, 'Leon, did you take her mining for oil?'

'Mommy? Mommy!' Mei Li yelped with glee and jumped to her feet.

However upset she'd been earlier that day, time had dried her tears. Kids could be fickle. But when it came to the crunch there was also a powerful ability to forgive.

Mei Li called out to her mother and scurried clumsily towards her for a hug. Leon stood and dusted himself off before joining them at the other end of the garden. As he got closer he saw Ada bury her face in her daughter's hair and murmur words of affection and comfort into her ear.

'I love you too Mommy,' Mei replied in a loud whisper before spinning around to call Leon closer, 'Look Daddy! Mommy's home.'

Leon watched Ada smile at the little girl and patiently listen to her excited rambling. It wasn't until she laughed at Mei Li's desire to buy a big, yellow lawnmower that he realised Ada was enjoying every minute.

She looked up at his approach and he saw dark smudges under her eyes that hadn't been there that morning.

'Hi. I thought you weren't coming back till next week. What happened? Did you miss your flight?' he asked casually.

'I managed to negotiate a little harder and I got some time off,' she paused to straighten Mei Li's pigtails and rub the oil from the girl's chin, 'It's been taken care of. I'm not going back there, at least not for a while.'

She wasn't telling him everything and that familiar churning sensation in his gut returned. As slick as she was, Leon always knew when she was hiding something from him.

'Just like that?' he pressed, 'But you were so convinced that you'd be out of town for the best part of a week.'

'I over-reacted,' she replied rigidly.

'Over-reacted? That doesn't sound like you.'

She frowned at him over Mei Li's head and he saw that the grey sashes under her eyes were from smudged mascara 'I thought you'd be pleased.'

'I am,' he insisted and quickly switched his smile back on, 'I'm glad you're here. I was just surprised. That's all. Sorry.'

She stood and tucked a lock of loose hair behind her ear. She took a quick study of his dirty clothes and then glanced at the lawnmower lying ravaged on its side at the end of the garden, 'I see you've been busy in my absence. I thought that we'd agreed that you'd take it into town to be mended.'

He tensed at her confrontational tone, 'I decided to save us a little money and do it myself.'

'Are you serious?' she looked at him and then back at the lawnmower suspiciously, 'Even after the washing machine debacle of last Christmas or your attempt to inflate the bouncy castle for Mei Li's last birthday party?'

'It was worth a try,' he replied defensively, 'Compared to other things I've done this is no big deal. It's a glorified electric razor.'

'Hmm. Does it still work?' she asked, smiling smugly as she proved her point.

Leon stapled his front teeth into his bottom lip and scratched the back of his neck as he thought it over, 'At the moment I'm not confident enough to turn it on and find out.'

Ada raised her eyebrows, 'Is that so? I leave our daughter with you for a few hours and there's barely a clean patch of skin on her.'

'I can assure you it was all educational. Wasn't it Mei?'

Mei Li nodded as she rested her head against her mother's thigh. She seemed to want to touch her as much as possible to prove that her mother really was home.

'Well as long as you learnt something...' Ada stroked Mei's hair affectionately, 'We have to leave here in an hour. How about you get into the bathtub and tell me all about what you and Daddy did today?'

Their daughter took Ada's hand, 'We made a cake. I got to mix the flour and the raisins. Come see it. You won't go again, will you? You're staying, right Mommy?'

'Of course, Little One,' Ada soothed her as they returned inside, 'Don't you worry.'

After tidying up the backyard, Leon followed them into the house. As he passed the bathroom door, he took a moment to stop and listen.

In between splashes and giggles he heard Mei Li's sunny voice.

'Can you sing to me again?'

He could hear the smile in Ada's reply, 'What would you like me to sing to you?'

'My favourite.'

'Your favourite?' Ada laughed warmly, 'All right.'

After a moment of silence, a surprisingly tuneful voice echoed through the landing, 'Say it's only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea. But it wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me.'

She had a voice as rich as red wine, but twice as intoxicating. The image of Ada singing their daughter to sleep and rocking her in her arms blossomed in his mind. He felt as though he was witnessing something meaningful. He was struck by how, even in the most mundane setting, she never failed to surprise him.

Leon had whistled through a quick shower and managed to scrape enough grease from under his nails to power a small car for miles. When he got out he found that Ada had laid out a change of clothes for him, including three choices of shirt and a pair of black, silk boxers that he believed was a dare more than anything else. He slipped them on and chose the navy shirt from the pile.

Besides that, he hadn't had much interaction with his elusive wife. There were moments when he felt that she was avoiding him. He'd go out into the hall only to find her ducking into another room and shutting the door firmly or if he made a move to talk to her she'd suddenly busy herself with Mei Li's hair, insisting that it was too untidy. He got the message and let it alone, treating it like a rash that would only get worse if he scratched at it. For the next hour they'd sailed up and down the halls of the house, seeing to their daughter's needs and preparing for a night out that only one of the three of them was looking forward to.

They hadn't said a word to one another until Ada had wandered out of their bedroom, tying the sash around her green, silk dress, and collided with him.

She sniffed sharply and backed hard into the doorframe. Leon winced and steadied her with his hands.

'Sorry.'

'Wasn't your fault,' she told him as she massaged her lower back and opened her eyes. Then she sized him up leisurely and smiled at him for the first time that afternoon, 'I've always loved that shirt on you.'

'Yeah. I remembered that you like me in blue,' he replied carefully, 'Sure you're up to this?'

'No,' her smile faded but she glanced at him shrewdly, 'Are you?'

'Nope,' his hands joined hers at the small of her back and he gave her a firm rub. He felt her shiver under his hands, 'But anything for her, right?'

'Yes,' Ada met his gaze evenly and replied with complete conviction, 'Anything.'

She sidestepped him and made her way to the stairs. From a distance he could fully admire her knee-length, halter-neck dress. The dark, apple green colour brought out her light golden tan and the fanning skirt made the most of those great legs. He'd never seen a patch of skin as deliciously lickable as the slope of her back. But besides that, it looked as though the weight of her own shadow was enough to bring her down. The line of Leon's mouth became hard as he watched her tiptoe away. He didn't want to let her disappear again, at least not until he was able to get the last word in.

'Hey.'

'What?'

Leon looked her in the eye, testing how long he could hold her attention.

She drummed her fingers on the banister expectantly, 'What?'

'Kiss me,' he demanded, his throat suddenly dry as he remembered hearing those very words from her that morning.

Ada pursed her lips at him and her eyes darkened for an instant. A thin glimmer of moisture began to gather under her pupils. She started to say something but faltered and rubbed her lips together nervously.

'Kiss me,' he repeated, his voice stronger this time. He fixed her to the spot with his eyes, making it impossible for her to look away, 'Since you've been back you haven't kissed me.'

Her cheeks coloured like the sky at dawn, but she didn't stop looking at him. She circled the staircase and, with three deliberate steps, she reached him. Her body was inches from his and yet the only contact she made was to place her supple hands either side of his face. It was a simple touch but again he felt captured. He felt weak. The scent of freshly applied makeup and perfume tickled his nose. She leaned towards him, slowly dominating his field of vision, her lips plush and inviting. On her delicate wrist she wore a pearl bracelet that matched her earrings. She hadn't put her shoes on so she balanced on her toes to bring them eye to eye. She didn't blink. His hands found her hips, fitting snugly in the dip of her waist, and his short breaths condensed on her cheek as she tilted her lips towards his.

Ada dipped forwards. She plucked at his mouth with her lips. Then she let him fall back to earth.

'Wha-' he gaped at her as she pirouetted easily and padded back towards the staircase, 'What do you call that?'

When his vision came back into focus he saw her smirking devilishly at him, 'A man your age should recognise a kiss.'

'That was _not_ the kiss I had in mind.'

'Then be more specific next time.'

He narrowed his eyes at her and she wrinkled her nose at him playfully.

'Tease,' he growled at her.

'Drama Queen,' she shot back as she started down the stairs.

A wide smile broke out across his face as he noticed there was a little more bounce in her step this time.

_And she still got the last word in._

Later they gathered in the kitchen for the first time that day as a family intent on spending the day together. They made sure that Mei Li kept her blue and white dress free from mess when they'd iced the carrot cake. The design ended up looking like a donkey with five legs rather than the dog Mei Li had asked for. Ada had laughed behind her hand at Leon's chaotic attempt to salvage the decoration, but their daughter had been too excited to notice. Finally they'd placed chocolate buttons for eyes and a cherry for the nose.

Mei Li had licked the leftover icing from the spoon and Leon, unable to help himself, had stolen a taste of icing straight from Ada's sticky fingertips. Her gasp was stifled under a burst of laughter. The affect that sound had on him hadn't waned at all. It had only gotten stronger, reinforced by his building sense of ease in her company.

With mounting affection, Ada looped her slender arms around him. Leon kissed her neck and squeezed her waist until her feet were barely touching the floor. Returning his embrace, Ada pressed a sudden, passionate kiss against his lips as Mei Li laughed. The shuddering of her chest against his body felt like a livewire in his arms and her kisses across his face were electric. The musky scent of her body broke through the gaps of her perfume and made his mouth water. She cradled his face in her palm and nestled her head on his shoulder, her sighs bathing his neck and infecting him with that virulent and memorable desire. He tenderly lowered her to the ground.

'Was that the kiss you'd had in mind?' she asked, her lips curling in satisfaction. The stress from that morning had been lifted.

'No,' Leon replied, twisting a lock of her dark hair around his finger, 'This was better.'

It had been such a perfectly executed manoeuvre and so natural a double act for them. With wordless ease they'd fallen into step with each other just as they had at the beginning in that dank, shadowy car park. It was amazing to him that a woman so deadly by nature and by profession could make him feel so well protected. Acting as her husband was miles away from easy. She was still unpredictable, haughty and, at times, outright demanding. But it felt right to be around her and to have her at his side to face everything, from zombies to children to Armageddon itself.

---

_The song Ada sang for Mei Li is called 'Paper Moon' and it's one of my favourite songs. Coincidently I thought it matched the overall theme of this story quite nicely._

_Thank you all again for being so patient. I plan to update again next Saturday (fingers crossed)._

_Until then hugs, kisses and chocolate-covered Leons for everyone!_


	14. Sweet Dreams

**Chapter 14**

**Sweet Dreams**

_To sleep, perchance to dream..._

_--Shakespeare, Hamlet_

Buddhists typically believe that our fierce attachment to people and to material things leads to inevitable suffering, because nothing in this world is suspended in its perfection or preserved by the inexorable power of selfish, human desire. Everything withers and dies; the luckiest born again into something vastly different.

Professor Vanessa Hung, Ada's grandmother, had not been particularly religious. She'd been a scientist specialising in anthropology and had spent her summers and winters in alternately cooler and warmer climates dusting the years off the skulls of peculiar creatures thought to be ancestors to the human species. She would reassemble them, line them up in front of her students at Yale and discuss, in detail, the inevitability of change.

But in a small nook in her library she'd displayed a figure of Buddha; its soft, plump body poised on a satin-covered, red stand. It had been besieged by a fortress of colourful candles that counted down the hours as they'd burned and the dripping wax formed icicles like molten rainbows over their silver holders.

Though she'd never asked, Ada had always wondered why her grandmother had kept, polished and adorned her Buddhist figurine and why she'd returned to it night after night as though she didn't believe that it was just a carefully crafted lump of bronze.

As a young girl Ada had snuck into her grandmother's library and seated herself behind the high table and in the sharp-edged chair in the guise of doing the homework that she had already completed beforehand. She'd done it just to watch her grandmother's idol. It had seemed fitting to her young mind that a figurine would take pride of place in the centre of her family unit; it was as lifeless as the rest of them.

Every now and then her grandmother would have it shaped and fixed, re-polished and decorated it with paper flowers whose artificial perfume rose through the air and straight out of the open windows.

After the termination of her grant from the Anthropological Institute, the cessation of her tenure as head of her department and, even earlier than this, her husband's callous termination of their marriage and the death of her only child, Ada's grandmother had needed an anchor, a conviction and a faith more than anything else in the world. Ada had not understood this notion of control until she had slipped that first red dress over her bare body, tightened the belt around the fabric and felt it strain to fit to her will.

A few metres from the velvet-black mouth of the alleyway a gas guzzling haulage vehicle blocked Ada's view to the opposite side of the road, which was her destination for the evening. The engine under the truck's round, silver belly roared into the night sky and hissed a plume of grey smoke from its four shuddering cylinders. To the left was a dumpster, its lid half-open to let the frosty breeze carry the flavour of rotten garbage and stale rainwater through the empty streets.

Shadows swayed across the walls like waves, their soft ripples reacting to the sudden flicker of a light from an apartment window or the headlights of a passing car. Fragments of refuse scuttled along the gutter with each gasp of the wind, their journey made up of irregular and noisy bursts of movement as plastic bags tangled with beer cans and fast-food containers that spilled their rancid slop onto the floor. Rain from the previous few nights had collected between the crevices of the cracked pavement breeding tiny, dirty lakes above the drains that were blocked with rotting leaves and candy wrappers.

Threads of sound, too distant and tangled to be determined as anything but urban birdsong, gushed from the open door of the bar a few buildings down the street. Like a clap of thunder a more distinct train of noise shot through the blurry evening; slamming doors, frantic footsteps and finally a boom of drunken laughter that celebrated something undoubtedly trivial and vile.

Ada tugged her gaze from the direction of the racket, her black lashes fanning against her cheeks before she looked up at the structure ahead. She'd reached the towering monolith of a 1940s apartment block. It was out of character with its surroundings as though the rest of the neighbourhood had been built around this single landmark. It was the only surviving relic of an architectural golden age and reeked of neglect. The crust of the modern world was closing in around it with its army of diners, strip clubs and sports bars. If she hadn't been sure that Leon would be home tonight she wouldn't have wasted the shoe leather to walk here.

She dragged the silver zipper of her jacket further up towards her throat as she walked slowly along Lincoln Boulevard, sealing herself away from the dirty air. Her black, fur hood was up obscuring her pale face and protecting her from the drizzles of lazy rain. She couldn't let herself be seen. This night, for reasons she couldn't figure out, had been the one event she'd planned the rest of her strategy around as she'd lain in her hospital bed recovering from days of ice and torture. This apartment block was her first stop and, in a way, the most important.

After she'd been carried out of that Spanish mausoleum, she'd been placed under the care of Wesker's staff. Their cold efficiency had set her at ease. The lack of pleasure they had when touching her or watching her or recording her late-night bouts of sickness and seizures had been a relief. For others to take pleasure in her suffering would have been worse than the physical injuries; it was the acid-bite of lemon juice over a bloody wound. The less they cared, the less she noticed her own affliction. But she'd recovered faster than expected, regaining the use of her hands after a few days and walking after a few more.

Wesker had visited her many times whilst she'd slept. He'd sat in silence through almost every appointment and she'd always pretended to be asleep. She hadn't done this to avoid him. Days underground in the darkness with only her nightmares for company had made her much less afraid of him. Pretending to sleep had been an act of disobedience. From the subtle elevation of her heartbeat Wesker would have known the difference between asleep and awake from the moment he walked into her room. At times like this she took enjoyment where she could find it and it felt simply delicious to parade her defiance around in front of him. This sensation returned along with her physical strength, baptising her in a vat of desperation and hatred.

During his last visit Wesker had broken his silent watch of her body, leaning over her bed and lifting the curtain of hair that covered her left ear. As his leather gloves scorched the tender flesh along her neck he'd whispered, 'Whatever you're planning Ada, it always will fall short of me.'

Dampness had gathered between her fingers but her eyes had remained closed.

He'd had her moved the next day and admitted her into 'guest quarters' containing all of her favourite comforts: toiletries, exotic perfumes, rich food and expensive clothes. It was a complete catalogue of who she was to him and who she had been until all those years ago.

Ada held her breath as she dived into the murky fog of the alleyway, letting the shadows submerge her and erase her from the outside world. The blast of frosty air that followed mocked her, tugging at the edge of her hood and reminding her of subzero water and her frozen cage. She shivered and turned her face from the direction of the gust before pushing through it to the end of the alley.

A troop of hungry pigeons scattered into the sky when she approached the stack of toppled trashcans they fed from. Ada reached into her coat and removed her grapple gun from the folds. It slid into her left hand with the ease and grace of a shapely, satin glove. Her right wrist, fractured when Wesker had knocked her unconscious in Madrid, was covered in a fabric support bandage. It was healing quickly, but still throbbed fluently.

She raised the gun to what looked like the seventh floor of the apartment block and fired. The ambient noise of the city was like a blanket smothering the clank of the hook as it locked around the metal bars of the fire escape. Retracting the cable and ascending high and fast caused her a great deal of pain. She clambered gracelessly over the railing of the balcony, laughing cynically to herself as the old structure wobbled under her weight.

_Talk about back to basics. I may as well be nineteen again. Out of shape, out of time, out of options._

Shaking her head, she glanced along the side of the building, counting the row of flats along the east side of the block. Slowly she edged along the fire escape, climbing its narrow stairs and navigating the metal labyrinth that was poorly grafted onto the face of the tower block.

Soon she found Leon's apartment. She'd almost passed right by it, repelled by the discarded coffee cup on the veranda and the thick streaks on the French windows. There was a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink, the plates fused together by dried food. Ada wrinkled her nose as she removed her black hood and turned away from the mess to look around the rest of the living area. Though calling it such was absurd. There was little sign that anyone lived in this place. It was seemingly empty as if he'd just moved in. Cardboard boxes took up space where furniture should have been, unopened mail and undiscarded newspapers covered every available counter and there were no rugs or carpets. There were a few lights, most of them extinguished, and a bundle of keys rested on the small table beside the door. In the centre of the room were a tired lounge chair and a heavily used doggy bed.

Her eyebrows arching in interest, Ada slid the glass doors apart and walked boldly into the apartment. She stopped in front of the small cot. It was red and green tartan, old and smelling of a concentration of pet hair and slobber. A bulky item was lodged under the blanket and Ada nudged it out with the tip of her boot. It was a running shoe, large and quite new, made of sparkling, fresh leather. It was ruined, having been chewed on and wrestled with by a restless animal. And beside it was a rolled up newspaper, a bath sponge and lime green sock with a hole at the toe. She smiled at the curious selection of pet toys.

_I didn't even know he had a dog._

She was more of a cat person. They were usually less needy than canines and more subtle in their attempts at affection. And they didn't stink nearly as much.

This wasn't what she had expected. The place didn't feel as alien to her as she'd predicted it would. This apartment was barely a home. It was sprinkled with little grains of life or animation, such as the used plates, the animal's crib and the careless pile of keys on the table weighed down by heavy key-rings in the shape of cartoon characters. But as for the rest, it was so completely temporary and basic.

She recognised it instantly. This was how she lived. Ada paused, her eyebrows kissing as she frowned. Well she didn't live this way exactly; she ate out every night and dusted occasionally, but the philosophy was the same. There was a deliberate lack of permanence in this space, no character beyond what had been there and what would continue to exist once the occupant was long gone. It was at odds with everything she had imagined of Leon S Kennedy. The daydreams behind her regular day had painted a picture of life and colour and stability. She had anticipated a relief from the tempest of emotions that had been stirring storms within her for weeks. Instead she'd found an emptiness that rivalled her own. They obviously had a lot more in common with each other than she'd realised.

For the first time since entering his apartment she reassessed her objective. Maybe this was a bad idea. What was she hoping to gain from this exercise beyond completing Wesker's orders? She shouldn't dare expect Leon to give her more than what he had already. Perhaps she'd bled him dry and was coming back for seconds like some kind of emotional vampire, flying to his balcony and melting through the gauzy drapes to taste his essence and feed her empty soul. Her stomach churned at the thought.

Ada moved to flip her hood back over her head but once her fingers gripped the fur edge she stopped. There was movement in the distance as the door arced open gradually, slicing through the beam of light from the window opposite. She smoothly grasped the gun at her hip. A furry silhouette on all fours shuffled out of the other room and Ada relaxed slightly, sliding her fingers from her firearm. It was a large, brown Labrador, its muscles strong and well-defined and its coat glossy, darkened to chocolate in the dim light. But it was a graceful and lethargic animal, healthy yet aged and mature. It was an active creature, wild in its intelligence, destined to die on its feet.

_Almost beautiful in its own way._

It was tired too, dragging its hind legs out of the other room, its snout pointed to the floor. Then it stopped, one front paw extended, and sniffed the light scent of her through the confusing layers of night-time aromas. Then it raised its head and its golden eyes found her. It gave a furious snarl. Its lips reared back and exposed rows of glistening, moist teeth. The canine's shoulders hunched and its ears folded back rendering it nearly wolf-like.

Ada stepped away from the fireplace and slowly came to a stop between the exit and the hostile animal. She inhaled, long and deep, her hands falling limp at her sides. For a full minute they simply stared, sizing each other up and asking where on earth the other had come from. Ada's heart hammered against her ribs and up through her throat. All it would take is one bark for Leon to wake and she'd have lost her chance.

She walked towards the motionless and threatening animal and crouched low before it.

'Worse creatures than you have tried...' she whispered, crouching low to dust her knuckles against the floorboards, '...and failed. Hush up. Now.'

Then suddenly it sniffed and silenced its growls with a final yelp. It sat down heavily onto the floorboards without taking its eyes off her. Then it yawned, wrenching its large jaws open, and scratched itself with its back paw.

Ada finally exhaled, closing her eyes and hanging her head. It tipped its head up to look at her, its eyes wide and full of distrust. She recognised that look so well, no matter the origin of those narrowed eyes and thin-lipped sneer, that it was a strange comfort to her.

The animal was loyal but not an idiot. Ada wondered silently if it had always been this way or if it was simply another being transformed under Leon's influence.

'Well aren't you a faithful beast,' she whispered, extending her hand to stroke its downy forehead. But she hesitated and withdrew her hand, deciding to stick with a slight smile instead, 'Where did he find you?'

More questions without answers. But the answers, perhaps, were worth the wait. Ada stood and watched as the dog rose up to guard its master's room.

'Where is he?' she enquired in a hushed voice.

The animal sneezed, spraying a light mist over the floorboards, and turned its back on her before sauntering into the other room. Its tail slid past the open door. Clenching her fists at her sides, Ada steeled herself and followed.

The warmth and the blue shadows that existed past the door gave her the dizzying sensation of walking through water. It was an effort to hold back the rising tide of discomfort. Her eyes had already adapted to the dusky grey of his apartment, so the weak blade of light that sliced through the gap between the heavy curtains was enough to help her see. His bedroom was as simply furnished as the rest of his home. Besides the bed, a dark rug and a tower of unopened cardboard boxes in the corner, there was very little to stand between her body and his. Not that it mattered. She could find him anywhere.

Leon was half-dressed and sprawled on top of the navy sheets, his jeans crumpled on the floor where he had likely thrown them down before climbing onto the mattress. She wondered how long he'd been sleeping. He looked comfortable, turned onto his side slightly, one arm above his head and bent at the elbow, the other across this chest. He'd kicked the covers to the floor. He looked like a sound sleeper. She would have used the phrase 'sleeping like the dead' but that maxim had lost all meaning to her a long time ago. The corners of her mouth twitched as she remembered how quickly he had fallen asleep in her arms once, how she'd found whatever switch it was that could power him down and how appealing he'd looked against the sheets.

Ada closed the bedroom door with a snap and restrained her growing smile. Memories were one thing, they were real. But what she had experienced was far from that. She didn't know this man, not in that way. She'd never kissed his lips or shivered with him under a hot shower or sat opposite him as he'd fallen to his knees and told her how much he'd missed her. That had been a dream.

As she took her first steps across the threshold she noticed a tall pile of folders and a dozen notepads beside the bed along with some uncapped pens and broken pencils. Without even reading the covers she knew that they had to be Leon's information regarding 'Lazarus'. It looked copious, throughout and promising; however, his filing system could use a little work. So he had trusted her, or at least he'd surrendered to his boundless curiosity. Part of her wanted to know which it was but she didn't want to push her luck. She'd never intended to bring Leon into her work in this way but the names in her research had begun to overlap. The CIA and Umbrella were joined at the hip like she'd always known.

Her Organisation had, as usual, decided to sit on this issue and watch it hatch into a disaster of epic proportions. They were neutral, supposedly. It was why she'd chosen them in the first place. But the chance of Leon getting catapulted into that unavoidable decimation began to increase beyond the level that she was comfortable with. He needed...he deserved a warning and, along with this, a lesson.

She hadn't given him everything of course. She'd wanted to but the whole picture was far too delicate to deliver complete. It was more palatable in fragments. She knew who the Umbrella mole was in the CIA. She'd known for months. But Leon had to find out on his own. He had to prove it in his own way, not in hers. Only then would he believe it.

Ada approached the bed, stopping by its side and taking a long, hard look at him. From this slight distance she could hear his deep but choppy breathing and catch the twitching of his nose when his silvery hair fell over his forehead. She was struck by how much she'd missed his face. It had been a sight that she'd refused to think about during her captivity. She'd rather not associate Leon with pain and humiliation.

The deep wound on his cheek was beginning to knit itself closed again. His toned forearms were covered in half-healed bruises and scrapes and his fingers were stained with ink and paper-cuts. The hem of his t-shirt had hitched upwards to reveal a firm stomach and a trail of white-gold hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his underwear.

She silently basked in the knowledge that she'd guessed correctly all those years ago. Leon was a boxers man. What she hadn't guessed was that he wore underwear decorated with cartoon characters. Tonight he was sporting a white pair decorated with pictures of Bugs Bunny and the cheeky caption "What's up Doc?"

Ada stared in open-mouthed wonder before shaking her head and chuckling under her breath, 'Oh Leon.'

She smoothed her coat and sat down beside him. The bed was firm but pliable, cupping her body at its edge. Leon felt her soft impact, his fingers curling against his palms and his legs shifting against the sheets.

Silently she dared him to open his eyes. She wanted to see the look on his face when he found her here. She wanted to gaze into those beautiful baby blues. She wanted to hear him say her name.

Ada closed her eyes, content for now to just imagine it. It was safer that way because in a fantasy he wouldn't ask her to leave. He'd ask her to stay maybe, pull her into his arms and make her breakfast the following morning. He wouldn't want her to go out and betray him on an empty stomach.

She exhaled a silent laugh and opened her eyes. He had swivelled around on his side to face her now, one hand tucked under his face and the other extended towards her, missing her hip by mere inches.

_When was the last time you'd touched him? I mean really touched him with care, away from violence and death and the filth of dishonesty?_

'Six years,' she whispered, her fingers crawling along the bed to slide against his.

His palms were like sand; warm, dry and coarse. Ada drew an outline of his hand with her index finger and traced the long stretch of his 'lifeline' to the solid, unbroken pulse at his wrist. They were such strong hands. Six long years ago in a cesspool she had bared her heart to an unconscious man and promised him her help. She wondered if she had enough credit to ask him to return the favour and help her now.

A gust of cold air swept under the doorway and brushed the scent of him under her nose like a feather. It was delicious while it lasted. It was peppermint shower gel, without a doubt. Ada hummed to herself and leaned over his body to take a sneaky sniff of his hair. Or at least it had begun as a quick inspection, but somehow her nose became buried in the fair strands and she was inhaling deeply. He was so fresh and earthy and clean and arousing, it filled her to the pit of her stomach. It drew a gravelly moan from her throat. Pulling her face away, Ada blushed to the roots of her hair.

His dog, who had been dozing obediently nearby until now, leapt up onto its hind legs, hurled its front paws forcefully onto the bed and made the mattress shake. It pressed its snout into the pillow and glared at her. Ada doubted that such a thing was sanitary but as far as that creature was behaving it had more right over this bed than she did.

Leon, still asleep, mumbled something she couldn't understand and his eyelids flickered. His forehead creased and he opened his mouth, slapping his lips together after a hearty yawn. Then he returned to his previous state of heavy slumber.

His pet, on the other hand, was less complacent to Ada's presence. It watched her resignedly and began to growl, the sound emerging from low in its belly and rumbling through the mattress springs.

_Fine. Point taken. I don't blame you. If I were you I'd want him all to myself too._

It was time to leave. This was all she'd come for. For days Wesker's threats against Leon had run rampant over her mind. She couldn't sleep till she'd checked on him and proven to herself that he was okay.

With one hand, she refastened the buttons on her coat. She slid the hood back over her hair and tightened it a few times until she was comfortable. With reluctance too powerful to ignore she gently pulled her other hand from his. But Leon disagreed with her choice. His fingers curled tightly trapping her hand and locking them together. He coaxed her back into the heated physical connection that she had always assumed was one-sided.

_Stay._

Ada flinched from his touch, her body half-rising from the bed, but her hand staying where it was. Instinct told her that she'd have to sever it to get away, like a wolf gnawing herself out of a steel trap. She exhaled gruffly and dug her fingers into the sheets. With a soft pull, Leon scooped her hand along the mattress towards his face and he tightened his grip on her, muttering something under his breath.

With the burst of movement over, he fell motionless again. His eyelids were trembling. He was dreaming. She'd always considered dreams to be a solitary pursuit, but it seemed that he wanted company. Ada rolled her eyes and glanced away, hiding her smile. She stared back at him for a few minutes, making quite sure that he wouldn't wake for many hours.

_I can't move now anyway. It would just wake him up and cause nothing but trouble._

Satisfied with her logical reasoning, she gradually reclaimed her seat. Keeping her left hand encased in his, she swung her legs onto the side of the bed. She doubted that Leon would have any objection to her keeping her shoes on. Ada rolled to face him, but didn't edge much closer. Arm's length would have to be enough. If Leon was even partially aware of her then he took the compromise in his stride.

His canine guard sulkily let its paws slide off the bed and onto the floor. It backed towards its bed on the floor but kept its yellow-eyed glare on her.

_So much for a little privacy. _

Ada smirked and gazed across the pillows to find Leon's calm face.

'Sweet dreams Leon,' she whispered.

---

Thanks everyone for the reviews of the last chapter. :-) I'll update again in about a week but to whet your appetite here is a teaser line from the next chapter:

'_Leon Scott Kennedy,' Ada arched a single eyebrow at him playfully, 'Are you asking me to have your baby?'_

:3


	15. The Truth, the Whole Truth

Okay, I'm back. Sorry, I have a very irregular schedule which affects my net access. This is the first time in two weeks that I've had time to do anything more than just check my email. And I've missed you all :3

**Chapter 15**

**The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth**

_Nothing in the world is more flexible and yielding than water. Yet when it attacks the firm and the strong, none can withstand it, because they have no way to change it. So the flexible overcome the adamant, the yielding overcome the forceful. Everyone knows this, but no one can do it._

_--__Lao Tzu _

'It's difficult to say this and not sound like a complete ass, but I have to say it. So apologies in advance for any _asinine_ behaviour,' Mike O'Brien chuckled into his plastic cup of watered-down beer as he peeked over Leon's shoulder to where the children were splashing in the surf by the bay, 'Are you two sure you want to go through with this next weekend? This is serious stuff. I don't want to put you off. We're happy to have some fresh meat at the range and you're a pretty elusive pair to get a hold of.'

'You sure do travel a lot,' Joan cut in to smooth the ruffles of her husband's bravado, 'From the moment you moved to town Mike was sure that you were a pair of glamorous cat-burglars or international assassins. Sometimes I think that he's wasted as an English teacher. He should have become a novelist. He'd have made a fortune.'

Leon smiled broadly and squeezed Ada's hand, which she'd tucked into the nook of his elbow as they walked side by side along the sandy beach. He silently enjoyed in the returning pinch of pressure from her fingers.

Little moments like that hadn't stopped once they'd left the house. Creating a measure of distance from that place, their home crackling with light and energy, had not cooled his connection with this woman or with their child. She really was their child now; it was a fact without sense or reason. She existed, maybe not in the real world, but elsewhere; inside him maybe. She was like a crooked seam in the fabric of his universe as if different threads of purpose were crossing over each other.

Shortly after seven, Mike and Joan had driven up the drive in their blue mini-van and the two families had climbed in together. The couple were supposed to be among Leon and Ada's closest friends, but from his point of view he was meeting them for the first time. But within half an hour he'd learnt enough about Joan and Mike to feel as if he'd been collecting their mail, babysitting their children and sharing spare sets of keys with them for years.

Petite, with a brown, doughy face and curly black hair in dozens of thin braids, Joan was a part-time cartoonist and writer for the LA Times under the pseudonym "Ally Wainwright". Whether it was political intrigue, sport or movies, she always had an opinion, but she stopped just short of being pompous because of her merciless sense of humour and her love of teasing and being teased.

Mike was a high school English teacher whose short beard, balding head and leather sandals created the image of an aging hippy. He used this to his advantage and played up his easy-going sense of humour and love of terrible folk music to lull people into a false sense of security. Underneath it all he was a perceptive guy with a strict eye for detail. On the ride up he'd waited until Joan and Ada were deep in discussion at the back of the minivan before leaned his head towards Leon.

'Things okay?' he'd asked quietly.

'Yeah...' Leon had replied slowly, 'Why d'you ask?'

'No reason,' Mike had shrugged, focusing his eyes on the road again, 'Except that when you dropped Mei Li at our house yesterday you looked like crap. But from the look of things, you and Ada have made up.'

'You can tell?'

Without saying a word, Mike had reached up and tilted his rear-view mirror in Leon's direction, drawing his attention to the smear of Ada's lipstick on his jaw. Smiling broadly, Leon had quickly wiped it away with his sleeve.

Mike and Joan had two children: Kelly, who was Mei's age and had brown hair down to her waist that hadn't been cut since she was three, and their two year old son Donovan, who wriggled in his giant, overstuffed baby carrier. They had a dog called 'Maximus', or often just 'Max'. He was a mighty German shepherd with a thick coat that Mei Li liked to bury her hands in.

Leon could tell why they'd bonded with this couple. They were normal, they were entertaining and most importantly they hadn't heard of anyone named Albert Wesker. It had been so long since he'd spent time around anyone who wasn't connected with Umbrella in some way and until now he hadn't realised how draining it was to be in the eye of the storm all the time. This was a welcome break for his soul.

An half an hour after leaving the house, they'd made it to the coast and joined a crowd of at least three hundred people on a long, wooden jetty that stretched out across the coast. The wide, wooden structure arched over white sand towards the black Pacific Ocean. From what he could gather the fair was an annual event for people in the local area to make the most of the great view and the free food. Balloons and ribbons were looped around fences and lamp posts, and in a small booth in the corner a troop of entertainers performed a puppet show to mesmerise the children and give the adults a break.

The place reminded him of a fusion of the backyard of his family home, of the beach in Los Angeles where he'd had his first kiss (Katy Yates, summer break, she'd told all her friends about it the next day) and of his favourite little bistro that sat on a pier in Santa Barbara under a fountain of beaded lights. He doubted that the similarity was a coincidence. Nothing else in these dreams seemed to be.

The fair had already started by the time they'd driven in and it had been surreal for the first few hours. Leon had smiled stiffly and nodded at the complete strangers who'd come up and greeted them like old friends. It was hard to tell if they were just being amiable or if they really were supposed to know these people. He'd relied on Ada to take the lead and spent his time watching after Mei Li as she'd ducked under the wooden fence and run onto the sand.

Conversation had muffled the music and the sooty smell of grilled fish had reminded him that he hadn't eaten for hours. They'd sat down on wooden benches and picked from a buffet of meat, bread and crisp salad. Every few minutes he'd felt a small child brush past his leg as they'd chased each other under the tables and out onto the beach to throw sand in one another's hair.

Ada had helped Mei Li cut up her food and lovingly kept the girl entertained. Leon had been spellbound by how comfortable and open she'd become since the tense barbeque at his family home. She was still the woman that could floor him with one look, but through her daughter, and through him something new had been ignited inside her. Watching her laugh into her wine glass or covertly guide his hand to her thigh under the table had become his new hobby.

Mei Li hadn't stopped talking about the fireworks during the meal, asking them how loud they'd be or what colours there were as if her parents could know such a thing. Soon she was close to wearing herself out with over-excitement before the display had begun. She and Kelly were joined at the hip from the moment they'd sat beside each other in the minivan. Kelly was a soft-spoken, shy little elf of a girl, but Leon got the feeling that she'd willingly get into all sorts of trouble with Mei Li.

Their carrot cake had been a hit; disappearing from the plate in the time it took for him to turn his back. The abstract decoration, on the other hand, had drawn more than a few giggles.

Joan had been the most diplomatic about their botched attempt at icing.

'Oh,' she'd said smilingly, 'What a cute horse you've drawn on top of the cake.'

'It's a dog,' Mei Li had replied earnestly and made everyone at the table laugh. She'd been quite pleased with the reaction even though she hadn't had a clue as to what she'd done to provoke it.

After eating they'd taken a walk onto the beach. The night had descended slowly, the sky darkening through shades of navy as the sun had disappeared behind the tall church spires on the other side of town. The moon was clear like cut glass, but in the distance heavy rainclouds were gaining on them.

Ada smiled faintly as she watched Mei Li and Kelly tossing a piece of drift wood around the beach for Max to fetch, 'We do appreciate your offer. It's been a while since we've been able to do anything as a couple.'

'But are you sure you want to come along next weekend?' Mike squinted at them dubiously, 'Because we take our paintballing weekends very seriously.'

Joan nodded sagely as she carried a sleepy Donovan in her arms, 'He's not joking. He won't let me beat him at anything, even when we were dating.'

'I thought you liked the strong type,' her husband replied, hushed and mildly astonished.

'Yes, when he's opening doors for me or offering to bathe the kids,' she deftly patted Donovan on the back as he burped up his dinner, 'Not when he's dancing on table tops to celebrate beating me at pool. I almost drove home and left your ass stranded there all night.'

He turned back to Leon and Ada, 'Don't listen to her. I'm not a monster,' he assured them as his wife mouthed the opposite behind his back, 'But this isn't a game for us. My team at work came second in the county paintballing championships last year and we have a shot at the trophy this time. So don't be surprised if I get a little...intense.'

'Bring aspirin,' Joan added, 'His headshots pack quite a punch.'

'Have you ever been paintballing?' Mike asked, ignoring his wife's comments.

'Not as such, no,' Ada was deliberately vague in her response.

'Any expertise with firearms?'

'Actually-' Leon flinched as Ada's nails bit into his arm.

'No,' she cut in with surgical precision, 'Not really.'

'Don't worry. I'll go easy on you both,' Mike's sincere promise was obscured by his smug, triumphant grin.

A chorus of barking and the sight of their German shepherd harassing a pair of bulldogs drew Joan and Mike further up the beach, whistling frantically for Max to heel.

'What was that all about?' Leon made a show of rubbing his aching arm, 'That really hurt.'

'I'm sorry,' Ada replied innocently, but her cool expression hinted that she was unrepentant and thought he was being a baby, 'But it's strategy. We've always kept the true nature of our work a secret from the two of them and now finally we can take advantage of it. I don't want him to know what he was going up against.'

'We're government agents and he's a high school teacher. Isn't that a little unfair?'

'Please,' she rolled her eyes in exasperation, 'As far as he's concerned, he's Rambo's worst nightmare. He needs to be taken down a peg or two.'

He took in her wicked smile and the sparkle of anticipation in her eyes. It reminded him of the moment he saw her in that boat after he'd settled things with Salazar. The sound of her voice snatched the breath from his lungs.

'Are we really going to do this to him?' he asked, his voice cracking under the weight of his arousal.

'Yes,' she said simply, as if anything else was out of the question.

He stared at her for a moment, his eyes narrowing at how deliciously brazen she could be, 'You are so naughty.'

'You love me when I'm naughty,' she took his hand and kissed his arm affectionately.

He laughed and drew his arm around her as they caught up with the others further along the beach. Max was given what Mike called a 'doggy timeout' in the back seat of the minivan, whilst Ada and Joan took the girls for ice-cream.

On their return Joan was clutching her abdomen, her face screwed up in discomfort. Mike rushed to her side as Ada took Joan's arm and cautiously led her to a seat.

'What happened?' Leon took the girls by the hand and guided them down the steps. At the bottom Kelly broke away and sat beside her mother.

'My third hotdog, that's what happened,' Joan waved them off impatiently and tucked a strand of Kelly's long hair behind her ear to reassure her, 'It's just indigestion. I'm fine.'

'Don't be crazy. You can't be sure in your condition,' Mike sat beside her, bouncing restless little Donovan on his knee as the kid began to wake from a light nap.

His wife glared at him and muttered in warning, 'Mike...'

Ada half-smiled at their exchange, 'Condition? What condition?'

'We're-'

'Mike!'

He threw his hands in the air despairingly, 'They're gonna find out in a couple of months anyway. Especially when you start bursting out of your clothes and throwing up on me,' he wrinkled his nose at Joan's flat stare, 'Yes. On me. _Always_ on me. You say that you don't aim for me on purpose but I've never believed you.'

'Oh,' Ada breathed in recognition, her velvety voice breaking through Mike's paranoid ranting. She gave Leon a side-ways glance that he couldn't quite decipher, 'I see.'

Joan's acidic scowl at her husband said everything that she couldn't verbalise in front of the children. Leon suddenly understood what was going on. But he was lost as to why she'd want to keep that kind of news a secret. Then he recalled how his sister had been very particular as to how she'd told her family and friends that she was having a baby. Maybe women were just sensitive about that kind of thing.

He tried to defuse the tension a little, 'I guess now we know why you volunteered to be the designated driver tonight,' he smiled, 'Congratulations guys. You're gonna have your hands full.'

'Yes,' Ada placed her hand on Joan's shoulder, 'Congratulations.'

She smiled in relief at their reaction but her eyes were fixed anxiously on Ada, 'Thank you.'

Ada gave her a quick nod and something unsaid passed between them.

Mei Li broke the silence with, 'Why is Joan gonna burst out of her clothes?'

'Leon, do you want to explain the mechanics of that?' Mike grinned broadly at him as he draped his arm over his pregnant wife's shoulders.

'Not for at least another five years,' Leon protested playfully.

A loud-speaker announcement from the organisers informed the crowd that they had one hour and counting until the fireworks display was going to start. Already the area had been taped off with a dozen men and women in luminous jackets circling the wooden plinths they'd erected and muttering into microphones as they begun another safety check.

Brushing aside her curiosity, Mei Li tugged on Leon's hand, 'Daddy! Can we go to the front now? Please.'

'It'll be a long wait. Sure you don't want to go watch the puppet show or the clowns?'

'It's okay. I'll go,' Joan lurched to her feet, 'I need to sit down anyway. I'll save your place at the front of the crowd.'

'You sure?'

'Sure as I can ever be. I'm not walking up this beach again tonight,' she winked at the kids, 'Who here can eat another ice-cream?'

After a unanimous 'me!' from the girls, Joan led the kids back to the pier. Mike walked behind, watching her intently in case she felt ill again. Leon moved to follow them, his hand blindly extended backwards in Ada's direction. When he didn't feel her touch, he glanced over his shoulder to find her still sitting on the arm of the bench, a lost look on her face.

'Ada,' he called to her, 'You coming with?'

She eased herself up and drew in a long breath, 'Can we talk?'

Leon's feet shuffled to a halt in the sand, 'Have those three words ever led to a pleasant conversation?'

She didn't answer; her eyes dull as she ignored his flippant remark.

He yelled back to Mike and told them to go on ahead.

Once the others had disappeared around the corner, Ada tilted her head towards the beach and motioned to him to follow her. Her expression was unreadable. This made him anxious. He'd foolishly grown used to her being more open and expressive around him. The sea air blew her hair into her half-closed eyes. Every few seconds she'd sigh and rake it back, the bracelet on her arm rattling as she moved. The dusky moonlight lit the folds of her dress and the stars blew them silver kisses. Her skirt whipped around her calves and she smoothed it down as she walked. These little nuances were a pleasant distraction, but they failed to quench the dry sensation in the back of his throat. He parted his lips several times to ask her what she wanted to talk to him about but he always chickened out. He wasn't sure that he wanted to hear what was serious enough to warrant a private tête-à-tête in the middle of a night out.

They found a small mound of sand towards the edge of the shore. Ada stopped and planted herself firmly onto it. Sliding her long legs out in front of her, she leaned back on her hands and smiled up at him invitingly.

'Do you remember when Mei Li escaped from kindergarten?' she asked as she patted the ground beside her.

Leon laughed as he sat and crossed his legs at his ankles. He propped himself up on his elbows as Ada kicked off her shoes. She dipped her tiny toes into the sand and let the grains tumble down her feet and onto her slender ankles.

'Her teacher called us in the middle of that meeting with the Department of Homeland Security to tell us that our daughter had crossed the street to the local park, picked a bunch of flowers and made it back before anyone had realised she was gone,' she continued, her tone recalling how frustrated she'd been but her eyes sparkled in amusement, 'We were furious when we came to pick her up. We'd told her again and again and _again_ not to wander off on her own. But it was almost impossible to stay angry once we got there and she lifted her flowers and said "Happy Valentine's Day". She'd seen you giving me roses that morning and she'd wanted to join in.'

He nodded and took a moment to picture the scene, 'She hates to be left out.'

'When I'm away I always think back on that day,' she was speaking softly now and he had to lean closer to hear her, 'I think about how suddenly something that once meant everything to me can cease to matter.'

Ada exhaled sleepily, her lashes fanning across her cheeks as she let her eyes drift closed.

'Hey,' Leon sat up and edged closer to her, 'If you fall asleep on me now I'll have to carry you back.'

She shook her head and replied dispassionately, 'I've been having trouble sleeping.'

'Me too,' he covered her warm hand with his, 'But something tells me that this isn't what you wanted to talk to me about.'

'You're right. I'm sorry Leon,' she opened her eyes and turned her body towards his. She exhaled deeply as if disappointed in herself, 'I wanted to apologise for the way I acted this morning. I could see that you were having a hard time, but once Palmer called I became so angry that I forgot all about it. It was unfair of me to leave without checking that you were okay.'

'There's nothing wrong with me,' he insisted and patted his chest in a show of macho contentment, 'See. All in one piece.'

She peered at him dubiously, her eyebrows dipping as she frowned in a way that made him want to kiss her till her ears popped. The best part of all was that right now he _could_ kiss her if he wanted to. He'd never had that kind of freedom with her before.

'Right now I am happier than I have been in years,' he brushed his lips against her cheek, 'And it's because of you and Mei Li. Don't ever forget that.'

She cupped the back of his neck and grasped his arm with her other hand, pulling him deeper into the embrace. The distant music from the fair faded in his mind. He listened to her breathing and waited until she exhaled and inhaled in time with the waves beating against the shore.

_You're in really deep, aren't you?_

He sighed at the thought and, feeling completely frustrated with himself, he remembered his earlier reluctance to fall for this life any more than he already had.

Ada lifted her head from his shoulder and he heard her swallow anxiously.

'Leon,' she breathed into his ear. 'I've been lying to you.'

His felt his smile slip away. His hands fell from her body and impacted the sand like dead weights.

Gingerly, he pulled away from her and sat back against the sand, 'What are you talking about?'

'I'm talking about my trip to Washington,' she sat up on her knees, tucking her legs underneath her body as if gaining a little extra height would make her feel more in control, 'There's something I haven't told you.'

His jaw muscles tensed as he considered her words. He knew her well enough to know that she wasn't talking about something as banal as maxing out one of their credit cards.

'So, apologising for this morning...were you buttering me up?'

'If I was, I obviously didn't do a good job,' she narrowed her eyes at him.

Leon's shoulders slumped and he stared down at his balled fists, 'Tell me what you did this time.'

'This time?' her laugh cut him like a knife, 'I didn't know I was such a menace.'

'Don't start that.'

'Start what?'

He folded his arms against his chest to control his ragged breaths, 'You get mean and sarcastic when you get defensive.'

'No. I get annoyed when you speak to me as if I'm a child,' she spat angrily.

He blanched, his head snapping up in shock as he realised that they were freefalling into another argument, 'Okay look, I didn't mean that. I'm sorry.'

She waved her hand, batting away his apology, 'Why did you react that way?'

He dropped his chin to his chest and squeezed the back of his neck with his fingers, 'Because I'm an asshole.'

She managed a weak smile, 'No. I think we're just reliving an old habit. There was a time when you and I couldn't be in the same room as each other for more than five minutes without raising hell.'

'I'm glad that changed.'

'And all it took was me kicking your ass.'

Leon snorted as he remembered their bout in the gym and how electric he'd felt sparing with her, 'I seem to recall that being a tie.'

'Hmm. Of course,' she replied, the hard lines around her eyes melting away, 'We're quite a pair aren't we? So different. The odds were stacked against us from the start.'

'But here we are.'

'Yes. Here we are,' she crossed her hands over her lap and looked out towards the horizon as if she was counting the ripples on the ocean.

'Hey,' he leaned forward to reclaim eye contact with her, 'Give me another chance. I know that you'd never want to hurt Mei Li...or me.'

Her gaze slid to his face and she breathed in a lungful of air, buying time to find the words that would shape her explanation, 'Last week I flew to Washington, but it wasn't for a conference. It was for a briefing before the CIA flew me to Hong Kong. For the past few months I've been active.'

'You've been taking part in field operations?'

'Yes. I was given a mission by Palmer. He ordered me to raid a warehouse outside Wan Chai Province for documents about one of Umbrella's old competitors,' she rubbed her throat anxiously, 'I know that we promised each other that we'd stop going out into the field, especially after what happened to you in Argentina. We'd decided that it was time to focus on our family and not risk our lives anymore.'

Leon pursed his lips thoughtfully. The thought of what he'd do when he retired had never crossed his mind before. Actually, the very thought of retiring had never been an issue, since there was always the chance that he wouldn't live long enough to receive his golden handshake and hefty pension. There was a reason his life insurance was so exorbitant.

'Then why did you take the assignment?'

Ada gradually relaxed and he felt himself calm down along with her. There was a delicate harmony between the two of them that he was beginning to understand. If one was knocked off balance then soon the other would tumble down too.

'I didn't _take_ the assignment. I didn't want it,' she replied firmly, 'I was _ordered_ to go. At first I thought that it would be a one-off. I used to enjoy my missions Leon. I lived for them. And the excitement was still there. But after it was over I was given more and more to do. The more I did, the more entangled I became in this operation.'

'Why didn't you tell me?'

'Because it's against the rules,' she rolled her eyes, 'That's a stupid excuse, I know. When I was younger I'd sooner break the law than crack a nail. But back then I'd had nothing to lose. It's different now and Palmer knew that. He threatened me. He said that if I told you the truth or if I pulled out of the project then he'd make things difficult for us.'

Leon's eyes widened and he sat up, 'He said what?'

_I don't even know this guy and already I want to wring his neck._

'He said that he'd recall you to full time duty. Or that he'd alter the conditions of my immunity agreement.'

'Can he do that?'

'Oh yes. He's a bastard but he's smart and he always keeps an ace up his sleeve,' she shrugged with a weary smile, 'He reminds me of Wesker.'

'So his call this morning-'

'Was to call me back for another field assignment, yes.'

He paused, his mouth twitching against a growing smile. He was starting to like having her finish his sentences, 'And you chose not to go.'

Ada began to blink rapidly and he saw a bead of moisture glisten at the corner of her eye before it melted away.

'I got halfway to the airport,' she explained, quickly composing herself, 'But I couldn't stop picturing the look on Mei Li's face as I left. I realised that I couldn't do it anymore. On the way back from my last mission to Wan Chai Province I'd met an informant near a deserted tenement to clear up some final business. But it was a trap. Agents from the warehouse I'd infiltrated drove by us and shot my informant through the forehead. I barely made it out alive.'

Leon swore under his breath and cupped her cheek with his hand. She nuzzled into his palm, her eyes still distant.

'It was like I was trapped,' she shuddered, 'I'd promised myself that after Raccoon City I'd never let that happen again.'

'What did you tell Palmer?'

'To get another agent.'

'As simple as that?'

'As simple as that,' she repeated and turned to meet his sceptical look with a determined nod, 'There are other agents that can do the work he was asking me to do. But what he really wanted was to keep an eye on me. There are people at the agency that were against my pardon agreement and who want me under lock and key. I made it clear that if he made things difficult for us then we'd both resign permanently. He'd lose two of his most experienced agents all because of his bravado. He was furious and I'm not sure if he'll back down or not.'

'That's quite a gamble. I guess he's not the only one with aces left to play.'

'Normally I wouldn't have hesitated,' the bridge of her nose creased as she frowned, 'But I have too much to lose now and it made me act like a coward.'

'No,' he shook his head, tossing his hair out of his eyes, 'You just wanted to protect what we have.'

'If you say so,' she said with worrying scepticism. She was her harshest critic, which was saying a lot as far as he was concerned.

Ada balanced her forehead on his shoulder as he pulled her to his side, 'I want a break Leon. I want you and I want Mei Li. I want to wash dishes, hang laundry and buy Mei Li her first outfit for school. I want to wake up early on Sunday mornings so I have time to make love with you.'

He pressed his smiling mouth to her hair, 'Sounds good to me.'

'Then you'll back me up?'

'D'you even need to ask?'

She sighed into his shirt sleeve, 'I'm sorry I lied to you.'

'It's okay,' his smile faltered but his confidence in her began to grow.

She tilted her head back to look at him and when she saw his smile, a grin blossomed on her own lips, 'This is why.'

'Sorry?' Leon searched her face for a clue as to why their conversation had changed course.

'You asked me earlier why I married you,' she elaborated, her voice rich with confidence, 'This is why. There are times when I doubt everything I believe and everything I do. But then all you have to do is tell me that things will work out and I feel differently. In Raccoon City, when you told me that we'd leave there together, I believed it.'

His eyes drooped half-closed and he shook his head mournfully, 'I was wrong. I was naive.'

'No,' she stroked his chin with her fingers, her cool touch waking him to the core, 'No. That's not the point. What you said gave me faith in myself. It kept me from loading that gun. A small act, maybe, but it was a start,' she smiled, seeming at peace with her dark and painful past in a way that he envied and hoped to feel for himself someday, 'You'd given me a wonderful gift and asked for nothing in return. That is why I fell in love with you and why I can't imagine being anywhere else but here.'

She loved him.

This woman loved him.

Whoever she was, and whether she'd ever really _be_, became irrelevant, because her loving him gave him a powerful sensation of clarity.

He didn't hesitate when he kissed her, hoping that, with this embrace, he'd be able to convey his gratitude, his adoration and his awe, because 'thank you' wouldn't have been enough.

Leon dragged her onto his lap, his palms spread across her naked back. She covered the rest of the distance on her own, coaxing him to lie with her on the cooling sand. Ada combed her fingers through his hair, muttering something about how good he smelled. As his hands sculpted her soft curves, he felt the silk of her gown ride up over her thighs.

She broke away first, her body sliding off him as they laughed into the night air like a pair of wayward teenagers.

'It's gotta be a crime for someone to kiss as well as you do,' he mumbled in satisfaction as they lay breathless beside one another.

Her reply rumbled through his body as she kissed his chest, 'You planning to turn me in Officer Kennedy?'

He laughed gruffly, 'No. But I may have to cuff you.'

'Oh really?'

'Yeah. Just to keep you from getting away.'

'I'll remember you said that.'

When he turned to pull her close he felt sand pouring in past the hem of his pants and into his shoes. He groaned inwardly and bent his knees to kick as much of the grit out as possible. It made no difference, but he couldn't bring himself to move if it meant leaving her side for even a second.

Before long, another question occurred to him. It tickled the back of his mind like a feather; soft but persistent. He chewed it over for a while, wondering whether he should push his luck and ask while she was still glowing.

'Ada.'

'Hm?' she climbed to her elbows and stared at him dreamily through her dishevelled hair.

'If you don't mind me asking...' he began, his voice low, 'When Mike told us that Joan was pregnant, you looked...you just looked a little strange. You worried me. Is there something on your mind?'

She lowered her head and used her forearm as a pillow. She wasn't angry at his question, as he'd feared she would be, but a sadness clouded over her eyes.

'I know why Joan didn't want us to find out about her pregnancy,' she finally spoke after a long pause, 'She thought it would upset me.'

'Why would she think a thing like that?' he asked, rolling to the side so he could face her.

'Because I told her about last year,' Ada's fingers skimmed across the sand and she gently smoothed them along his chest, 'She knows about our miscarriage Leon.'

His breath whistled through parted lips as the words settled around him like snow; thick, deep and cold.

'You were so supportive at the time. It meant everything to me,' she continued, 'But somehow Joan and I got to talking and it slipped out. I was relieved. Having another woman to talk to is new for me, but it helped. You understand?'

He nodded distantly. She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms up over her head before letting them fall back across her chest.

'When I realised that Joan was pregnant, I admit I was thrown. But she's my friend and a good mother. I wanted her to know that I _am_ happy for her,' her tender smile didn't leave him in any doubt that she was telling the truth.

But he still ached for her and even a little for himself. He hadn't considered the possibility that this dream came with loss as well as gain.

When he'd been ten years old, his Aunt Sarah had lost a baby. He wasn't supposed to know that she'd been pregnant, but he'd been curious even at that age and he'd overheard more than a few private conversations and phone calls.

Sarah had been seeing a mechanic at the time and Leon's mother hadn't approved. Not because of his profession, but because he was married. Desperate to avoid the stigma from her neighbours, Sarah had gone to stay with her and Moira's eldest sister, Emma. During her sixth month of pregnancy, the baby had stopped moving and was stillborn before a caesarean could be administered. Sarah had stayed at Leon's home for the next few weeks and Leon's mother and Emma had stayed in shifts to watch over her. But Sarah had made fun of her sisters for being mother hens and insisted over and over that she was 'right as rain'. To Leon's eyes at least, she had been more than fine. She had taken him out shopping for skates and taught Hannah to make cupcakes.

She'd simply been 'Aunt Sarah'.

Except for that one evening. Leon had gone downstairs to sneak another cupcake while his family were asleep. He'd found Sarah, in the kitchen on her own, her blue blouse soaked purple with tears. She'd seen him lurking by the door and hadn't protested when he'd taken a seat beside her in silence. It'd been like a car wreck in the middle of his kitchen; agonising but enthralling. He'd never seen an adult cry like that before. Though he'd had only a faint idea of what had happened, instinct had told him that there was nothing he could say to stop it.

After about an hour, Sarah had wiped her nose, grabbed him a cupcake from the cupboard and kissed him goodnight leaving him to wonder how many nights she'd spent like that. They'd never spoken about that evening and he'd never told anyone about it. As bubbly and honest as Sarah was, he knew that to her this kind of grief was intensely private.

The thought of them going through something like that gutted him, but he admired the strength that radiated from Ada. In her place he was convinced that he'd be a wreck.

'I'm glad for Joan, but honestly-' she exhaled suddenly and in the dim light he could tell that she was growing pale, 'God! If you'd told me all those years ago that I'd be lying here envying a pregnant woman I would have...'

'Laughed?'

She smirked, her eyes sparkling dangerously, 'I would have had to restrain myself from shooting you. Even before my assignment to Raccoon City, getting pregnant was a career ending hazard. I'd sworn never to let it happen.'

'What changed?'

'Me,' she replied immediately, 'You changed me.'

She gave his face a final caress and he closed his eyes, committing the texture of her fingertips to memory. Then she sat up and began to dust off her arms. He followed her, his lips twisting as he realised that bits of grit had somehow ended up between his teeth. He groaned and wiped at his lips with the back of his hand.

Ada glanced over and laughed at his inelegant grooming, 'Here. Let me,' she brushed his forehead and straightened his collar, 'Did you know that Mei Li has asked about little brothers and sisters?'

'Makes sense. She spends a lot of time with Kelly and her brother,' he replied after thinking it over, 'She's bound to be curious.'

'It's more than that. I think she gets lonely when one of us is away or when we're both busy.'

He watched her as she finished with him and began to tighten the sash around her dress.

'And what do you think about little brothers and sisters?' his tone was level and nonchalant, but his heart was pounding.

With her eyes lowered, she continued to dust off her dress, 'I don't know Leon,' her hands lingered on her stomach, 'But I think about it everyday.'

Then the cool and collected expression on her face collapsed as she started to smile and her lips trembled, 'It's ironic. We conceived Mei Li at the most inconvenient time possible. Wesker was advancing across Africa and Asia and the week after we'd gotten engaged we were sent on different assignments on opposite ends of the globe. But now that we've finally settled down we can't seem to give a repeat performance.'

'Maybe the odds are stacked against us,' he said, tucking his shirt back into his pants, 'But we beat them before. There's no reason we can't do it again.'

'Leon Scott Kennedy,' Ada arched a single eyebrow at him playfully, 'Are you asking me to have your baby?'

His fingers slipped on his belt buckle. When he caught her teasing smile, he grinned and staggered to his feet. He held out his hand to her, 'Let's make a deal. I'll agree if you can keep making them as beautiful as our little girl.'

She tilted her head back, clasped his forearm and rose smoothly to her feet, 'We should get back to her.'

'Right, the display,' he fumbled at his sleeve to reveal the face of his watch.

They had another twenty minutes left before the display started.

Ada slipped her shoes back on and batted any left over sand out of her hair.

He leered at her, noticing her ruffled hair and rubbed-off lipstick, 'You know this is going to look like a walk of shame.'

'We weren't having sex.'

'They don't know that.'

She eyed him saucily, 'If we'd been making fireworks of our own, the entire beach would have heard it. Come on.'

He was poised to follow her, but noticed a dark shape out of the corner of his eye. In the distance a man was standing by the lapping waves, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. He could have sworn that he and Ada were alone a moment ago. Peering closer, he made out the angular hat and crisply pressed edges of a military dress uniform; a uniform he recognised.

'Ada,' his throat tensed, 'You go on without me. I want to enjoy the sea air for another minute or two.'

She stopped in her tracks and looked over her shoulder, 'You sure?'

'Yeah,' he gave a faint smile, 'I'll be back in time. I swear. I wouldn't miss it.'

'All right,' she replied reluctantly, 'Don't keep us waiting.'

Leon watched Ada strut back up the beach towards the warmth of the pier. When she was out of earshot, he turned towards the shadow by the water and started to approach him. The darkness surrounding them thickened as heavy clouds blanketed the sky and smothered the moonlight. The man saw him coming, his body straightening to a posture that only a decade in the armed forces could perfect.

'Dad,' Leon called out as his father's grey eyes focused on him, 'You'll never guess what I just did.'

Nathan Kennedy stared back patiently, but didn't answer.

'I told Ada that I wanted to make beautiful babies with her,' Leon shook his head deliriously as if trying to dislodge the grin from his lips, 'Days ago I could barely say her name and now I'm here imagining what she'd look like pregnant. I'm crazy.'

'But you're happy,' Nathan replied, sounding as though he was on his last few crumbs of energy, 'Sanity's a small price to pay. Take my word for it.'

As he watched the foamy lip of the ocean creep closer and closer to their feet, Leon realised that it went beyond joy. These people were a part of him and for that alone he trusted them.

'This is gonna end soon, isn't it?' he asked, knowing the answer but wanting confirmation.

'Yeah. I'm sorry.'

He threw his palms upwards in a show of ease, 'Don't be. This was..._is_ a good thing for me. I got a day with a loving wife and a great kid. Most people can only dream of something like this-' he gave a short laugh, 'Wait. Forget I said that. I want you to know that I appreciate it. All of it.'

His father's expression cooled ten degrees. The furrows around his eyes, usually crackling with life and humour, sagged, 'I didn't do anything, Leon.'

'Are you kidding? You knocked my head on straight. You put up with my tantrums-'

'And I missed out on twenty-two years of your life,' Nathan replied, his tone sucking the warmth from the air.

Leon's smile withered and his eyes grew dark, 'Reminding me isn't necessary. What the hell's the matter with you?'

'How long have you got?' he muttered caustically. Under four layers of starched cotton his body grew tight, 'You were right when you called me a dreamer. Your mother called me that when we were married. She used to love that about me, but after a few years it became just another insult. Guess you could call it one of the missiles we'd chuck at each other when we fought.'

His voice trailed off and Leon's brow tensed with worry, 'I understand-'

'No, you damn well don't,' Nathan cut in sternly, 'And you better hope you never do.'

Locking every bone in his body, Leon weathered his father's stare, 'So, what is this? If you're planning to drag yourself over hot coals all night, I'd rather not watch.'

As his father dug his wide fingers into his palm, his knuckles cracked. His anger became a distant thought, buried under an avalanche of fatigue, 'Please listen to me. I don't have much time.'

Leon took a deep breath, the salty air tasting like rust in the back of his throat.

'No. Don't talk,' his father snapped irritably, 'I asked you to listen.'

His short nod was invisible in the gloom, but his silence was all Nathan needed to continue. Though his dad had always had a hard stare, the kind that could stop a pit-bull in its tracks, now he was struggling to meet his child's eyes.

'I left the army when you were five and Hannah was still a baby,' Nathan moistened his bottom lip and measured his words out with precision, 'I don't know how much you remember about our apartment, but I can tell you that it was a crap hole. I had my insurance payout and army pension, but your Grandpa Mac fell ill. He had no health insurance so I agreed to lend it to him,' he scoffed bitterly, 'I say "lend", but there was no way he was gonna pay us back. Your mom begged me to let him have it and I couldn't say no.'

Grandpa Mac had never had anything good to say about his son-in-law, but in retrospect this didn't surprise Leon. Pride was the strongest vein that ran through his family. His grandfather would have felt too much shame for there to have been any room for gratitude.

'From then on things were tight,' Nathan continued soberly, 'We had old debts and we were always making new ones. In your tree-house you asked me how I could afford to go out drinking most nights even though I didn't have a job.'

The remark was rhetorical but Leon answered with a husky 'yeah' regardless.

'My drinks were on a tab,' his voice was flat as he tugged at the threads of the past, unravelling their tiny patch of history, 'They were paid for by some guys I knew. In exchange I'd do jobs for them.'

'Jobs? What kind of jobs?'

'Deliveries. Debt collecting. Keeping a night watch,' Nathan rattled off the list blandly.

The disjointed pieces began to blend into an unsettling image.

'And these "men",' Leon asked cautiously, 'Who were they?'

He sighed impatiently, 'It doesn't matter.'

Leon seethed, speaking through clenched teeth, 'It doesn't matter? You can't be fucking serious, because it sounds like you were working for the mob.'

His father didn't protest, as Leon had been hoping. Instead he turned away. The metal buckles on his clothing clinked together as he moved. He'd broken into a cold sweat. Either he was trembling or the rest of the world was.

'It wasn't anything as glamorous as that,' he said finally, 'It didn't matter to _me_ who they were. I never bothered to find out. They had money. I needed money. They needed a guy who could handle himself. Simple math.'

A feeling of dread clawed up from his gut. Leon squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose as he struggled to keep calm, 'Nice to see that you put so much deep thought into it.'

'Watch your mouth,' his father snarled.

'The last thing I owe you right now is the luxury of obedience!'

'What about empathy, huh? Or understanding?' he demanded, 'I couldn't find a job. My family was suffering. It felt like the world was closing in on me. I found a solution. It wasn't perfect, but I found it.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'Because you asked,' Nathan replied coarsely, growing pale a second later as he realised that his son had no idea what he meant. A slowness overcame his voice, 'You asked me how I died. Remember? You wanted to know who killed me. The truth is _I_ killed me. I wasn't holding the knife, but it was my fault.'

Leon cheeks began to burn and he suddenly felt weak. A slight breeze could have thrust him down and pinned him to the floor. He didn't want to believe that his father would be so reckless, not only with his own life, but inevitably with the lives of their entire family. During his time at the academy and the secret service he'd seen how organised crime spread like a cancer, sweeping from a handful of desperate individuals and up through entire families and communities.

'I worked for a man named Denny. There was a shipment of diamonds coming into New York and Denny had made a deal with a customs officer at the shipping yard,' his father's lips trembled as he dug deep within himself to expose each secret, 'I was part of the handover. I was supposed to drive to the port, pay the clerks at the yard and bring a case of diamonds back. I knew zip about jewels but the clerk told me that each one was worth thousands of dollars at least. I was only being paid two hundred bucks for the job. That pissed me off.'

'So you thought you'd top up your salary with a few of the rocks?'

'I thought "Hey, they won't miss one or two". Steal from the rich, give to the poor, right?' Nathan's lips curled into a jaded smirk, 'So I did it. I handed over the goods, minus my cut and I went home.'

'Then what?'

'The next day I got a call from one of the bartenders I knew. He told me that Denny had been shooting his mouth off at the bar. He'd noticed there were diamonds missing from the stash. I didn't know if they suspected me or the clerk, but I knew it was only a matter of time. I was tense all day, sweating bullets. I argued with your mother that night and left the house. So I went drinking, trying to forget how screwed up I was.'

Nathan inhaled deeply through his nose as he limped towards his son, closing the gap between them. His peppery bursts of his breath warmed his son's face, 'After my fifth shot of whisky I came up with a plan. D'you know what I'd decided to do before my boss's knuckle dragging goons found me at that bar?'

He'd been silent for almost ten seconds before Leon realised that he expected an answer. He gave a small shake of his head, the movement making his eyes sting.

When his father spoke he sounded stilted and pained. Every word was like a dagger dragged inch by inch out of his side.

'I was gonna to buy a bus ticket,' he flinched at how ludicrous that sounded, 'I was planning to take the diamonds I'd stolen and leave the city. I needed to escape. I was scared and so weak Leon. I'd had so many great plans and I couldn't stand seeing how badly I'd failed. Your mom should have told you the truth,' he broke away from Leon, wringing his hands, 'But no. Due to a few careful deceptions I died a "hero" in your eyes, instead of a useless piece of shit that would walk out on his family. I was honoured instead despised like I deserved. The guy that killed me...I should thank him. He helped you keep what little was left of your innocence. He kept you from hating me all your life.'

Leon fixed his wide eyes on his father's trembling form. The man seemed to be shrinking inside his uniform with every word he said. He couldn't take the heroic image of the man he'd worshipped and wrap it around the sorry, broken figure he'd never really known.

He ran his hands over his face, trailing wetness from his eyes to his cheeks and chin. He fixed his eyes on his father, his tongue curling along the inside of his parched mouth.

He managed to choke out the reply, 'You know what Dad? I wish he hadn't bothered.'

Nathan grimaced, but accepted the remark without complaint, 'I don't know what I was thinking, Leon. I can't use the alcohol as an excuse. Please understand that I didn't want to leave you all behind, but I made myself believe that you were better off without me. I couldn't face your mother anymore and I knew she'd leave me if she found out what I'd done.'

'During all this self pity, did you ever stop to think that if you stole from the mob they might come after Mom? Or even Hannah and me?' Leon asked furiously.

His father spat out an empty laugh, 'I wasn't thinking much about anything by that point.'

'But Mom found out anyway?'

'Yeah,' his voice was thick as he replied as if he'd been sinking tequila shots all night, 'I didn't want to leave without explaining everything. I wrote her a letter. I was planning to mail it to her after I'd left the city, but I didn't get the chance. I'd left it in my wallet.'

Leon swallowed hard and felt a web of dread curling up his gut, 'The cops gave Mom your wallet when they came to our house. She must have found it right after.'

He remembered how stony-faced and resentful his mother had been after his father's funeral and how she'd seemed to hate him for years before blanking him out almost completely. Finally, he knew why. What he didn't understand was why his mother had kept the truth from him. Maybe she'd been too proud or perhaps deep down she'd realised how much the lie had comforted her son and no amount of bitterness could make her snatch that away.

Leon eyed his father wearily as if seeing him for the first time, 'So, let me get this straight. You stole from the mob and, to escape any repercussions, you were gonna take your stash and leave the state without us?'

Nodding dolefully, Nathan dug the heels of his palms into his forehead, 'I can't defend my decision-'

'Then stop trying.'

'I'm doing what's best for you-'

'No, you're doing what's best for _yourself_!'

His mouth formed a hard line and his eyes sparked fire, 'D'you think this is easy for me? Do you? You _need_ to know the truth. Tell me you don't deserve that.'

Leon's chest swelled as he drew in a long, slow breath. It felt like breaking the surface of the ocean after years of holding his breath.

His father stewed anxiously for a minute in silence. The muscles in his cheeks twitched as he poured his willpower into staying face to face with his boy. His heels dug soundlessly into the damp sand. He raised his hand to his mouth and pinched at his bottom lip.

'You gonna put me out of my misery Son?' he failed to inject enough humour into his words to keep them from sounding frail and empty.

'I don't have anything,' Leon finally admitted, sounding almost surprised by that, 'I don't have anything left to say to you.'

His father's jaw fell slack. The shadows under his eyes looked bottomless. He watched, with a mounting sensation of helplessness, as his son turned his back and began to walk away.

'Oh come on!' he bellowed over the roar of the ocean, 'That's it? You're gonna walk off?'

Leon's stride faltered but he didn't stop his trek up the beach.

'Don't leave it like this,' Nathan demanded, his lips trembling as if every word was a struggle, 'Yell at me! Take a swing at me if you want, just don't walk away.'

Nathan's pleas haunted Leon's every step as he ploughed through the deep sand and back towards the pier. He didn't look back.

When Ada greeted him by the bandstand, he fashioned his lips into a lukewarm smile. She didn't buy it.

'What happened?' she enquired softly into his ear.

'Nothin'' he muttered against her forehead as he kissed her quickly, 'Don't worry about it.'

He felt someone tugging on his pant leg.

'You were gone long.'

Glancing down he found Mei Li, her lips smeared with chocolate ice-cream. Her tiny hand clutched at his clothes and painted them with sticky fingerprints.

His expression was flat as he stared lifelessly at his child- or rather the fragment of his fractured consciousness masquerading as a four year old that loved her daddy. Suddenly he felt very tired and hopelessly worn.

'Look,' Mei Li lifted her other hand and he saw that she was holding a bunch of wild flowers and dried grass, 'Happy Not-Valentine's Day.'

He parted his lips, but his voice dissolved in his throat.

'I wanted to give you a Valentine present, but Mommy said it's not Valentine's Day today,' Mei Li explained as she shook the white and yellow flowers at him, 'So Happy Not-Valentine's Day.'

Leon blinked at her for a moment, his mouth twitching awkwardly. Then he laughed. The sound was thick and uneven, but it echoed through every hollow, filling the cracks inside him and expanding, making them deeper. He felt utterly alone.

And through the thick, grey depression this sensation brought down on his shoulders he realised that, more than anything else, he wanted to spend the night listening to his daughter's laugh. He wanted to wrap his arms around his wife and shield her from the cold. He wanted to belong somewhere tonight.

Leon crouched down and scooped Mei Li into his arms where a monstrous bear hug waited for her. He avoided Ada's face, knowing exactly what kind of expression he'd find on it. But he could still feel his neck growing damp and his ears glowing red under her gaze. At times like this he resented being such an open book to her. Her fingerprints were all over the pages of him he had yet to touch.

'That's so kind of you. Thank you Peanut,' he breathed into Mei Li's fine, midnight-black hair, 'I remember something about fireworks tonight. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?'

She grinned toothily and pointed a chubby finger towards the night sky.

Ada quietly slipped her arm around his waist as they walked to the end of the jetty and melted into the crowd. Joan and Mike were already there waiting for them with a hot drink and a smile. A hundred warm bodies barricaded them against the evening chill. Black clouds were advancing on them and thunder rumbled in the distance like the footsteps of an advancing army. Mei Li bounced with delight. She brought back bittersweet memories of the wonder and exhilaration he'd felt at the fairground as a kid.

Swinging the girl onto his shoulders, Leon wrapped her tiny hand tightly in his and prayed that the storm would hold off for at least another hour.

---

_Happy not-Valentine's Day to everyone!_

_The next update will emerge ASAP. __Muchas gracias__ for the reviews as always._


	16. Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice

**Chapter 16**

**Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice**

_Author's note__: It's only right that I dedicate this chapter to anyone with a sweet tooth._

'Here we are.'

Joan's words didn't register to his ears until the minivan lurched to a stop outside the house. Leon's head shot up from where it had been resting on his knuckles for most of the journey.

During the fireworks display earlier that night the sky had been a blank canvas for a hailstorm of electric colour. But as soon as the van doors had been shut the clouds had ruptured, popping like balloons. His prayer had been answered at least. Now raindrops the size of golf balls pummelled the car's roof and the temperature had dropped at least three degrees making the windows fog up. Mike jacked up the radiator, joking that his wife could wear a t-shirt in the middle of a snowstorm but he got goose bumps in a tropical heat.

As he inclined his head towards Mike's voice, Leon smiled but the expression was as flat as day old beer left out in the sun. His father's confession still echoed like church bells between his ears. A hard, deadened sensation all over his body left him feeling as if he was balancing on the head of a pin.

During the display Mei Li had been perched on his shoulders. As the Catherine wheels pinned to wooden posts either side of the pier began to spin and fire white embers onto the sand, Mei Li had lifted her hands from his head and clapped. Then she'd wobbled on his shoulders, squeaking as she lost her balance.

Leon had reacted swiftly and steadied her with his hands, 'Hey, watch yourself Peanut or you'll fall off.'

'She's just excited,' Ada had reached up and supported Mei Li's back with one hand, 'Aren't you, Little One?'

'Mommy! Look, a red one,' Mei Li cheered as a burst of ruby sparks rained down on them.

'I can see. Isn't it pretty?' Ada had replied warmly as another firework, glistening white, swept towards the horizon, 'It's like a shooting star. Make a wish.'

A mutinous part of him had wondered if he should wish that these dreams had never started. He shoved that thought away, content to leave it unanswered.

Beside him, Ada stirred in her seat and began to slide her arms into her jacket. Her movements were deft and gentle to ensure that she didn't wake Mei Li who was sleeping soundly between them.

Kelly was sitting opposite, close to her parents. She wasn't asleep yet but her head was bobbing up and down as her eyelids gradually rolled shut. Little Donovan's pacifier was hanging out of his mouth as he dozed. Max the dog was out for the count. Occasionally he broke the silence by yelping and twitching in the backseat as he chased his dreams in circles inside his head.

'It's been a great evening. I'm glad I made the time to come,' Ada told them, her voice low and melodic, 'We needed this.'

'Anytime,' Mike winked happily, his white teeth looking bright against his thorn bush of a beard.

'We've been thinking,' Joan cut in as though just remembering something important, 'We're leaving for a vacation next month. We're going to visit Mike's mother in New Zealand and we can't bring Max. Since Mei Li loves him so much, maybe he could stay with you. We'll pay for all his food of course, but it'll give you guys a dry run in case you decide to get a pet of your own one day.'

Ada hesitated with her answer, her lips pursing as if she was trying to prevent her kneejerk reaction of 'hell no!' from escaping.

'Oh he's no trouble,' Joan twisted in her seat to look at them, using direct eye contact to boost her sales pitch, 'Max sleeps most of the day anyway. He's part German Shepherd and part cushion.'

'But you may want to invest in some plastic sheeting,' Mike whispered conspiratorially, 'He has these night terrors and it gets a little...messy.'

Joan cut her husband a 'not now' look, 'It'd really help us out.'

Ada muttered an evasive 'we'll think about it' and they exchanged drowsy goodbyes as the night wound down. Leon wanted nothing more than to fall face-first onto a soft mattress.

He eased out of the van and within seconds his shirt was saturated with freezing rain. Water bled through the fibres and dribbled from his cuffs. His nose was the first body part to go numb. His jaw followed close behind, tensing under pin pricks of icy air. He squinted through the darkness and their porch light, just yards away, blurred into view. Ada bundled their sleeping little girl up in his jacket and passed her to him. He cradled her close to his chest and heard her squeak as she began to wake. Together they jogged through the storm to their front door. Ada's hair was already plastered to her forehead as she fumbled through her bag for their keys. With a sigh she unlocked the door and they stumbled into the dark hallway.

'Daddy?' Mei Li rubbed her eyes with her fists.

Leon lifted the fur lining of his jacket from her head and she popped out like a turtle from her shell. She buried her face into his chest when Ada switched on the light.

'We're home,' he crooned softly, rousing her from a half-sleep, 'I'll take you up to bed, okay?'

She gave a long whine, 'No. I don't wan' to sleep.'

The corners of her eyes were thick with dried tears and sleep. She began to pick at one if his buttons miserably.

'I have an idea,' Ada saddled up beside them after hanging up their coats, 'Daddy can tell you a story before bedtime.'

'Story?' Mei Li blinked through puffy eyes, her body tense as if she was waiting to spring out of his arms and up the stairs, 'Like the one about the dragon and the spaceship?'

'Yes,' Ada rubbed Mei Li's cold fingers. She inspected Leon out of the corner of her eye as if wondering whether he'd lost his mind, 'Daddy has quite the imagination, doesn't he? I'm sure he'll make up a special one just for you,' she turned towards him, her eyes glinting with challenge, 'Won't you, Leon?'

'I...Yeah. Okay,' he replied, as she succeeded in putting him on the spot, 'But only if you're in your jammies in the next thirty seconds.'

He lowered Mei Li to her feet and she scampered up the stairs with boundless energy that he made him feel tired just watching her. Ada sidestepped him to follow her up but he swivelled around to block her path in one easy movement.

'I'm so exhausted that I can barely remember my own name. And you want me to _make up_ a story?'

Her mascara melted into the creases around her eyes as she smiled, 'It was either that or making her run around in a circle until she tired herself out.'

He recalled telling her about his old babysitting techniques and felt oddly touched that she'd remembered such a trivial piece of his past, 'So, you know all my moves, huh?'

'It's my job,' she replied as she brushed past him, 'And you know how seriously I take my work.'

Ada took her sweet time climbing the stairs. By now her dress looked like it'd been spray painted onto her body. The twitching of every muscle in her thighs and pert bottom was visible as she swung her hips from left to right and back again.

A tidal wave of inertia swept over him. He didn't know whether it was from arousal, fatigue or an overload of emotion that had blown a few fuses in his spinal cord. He wouldn't have gotten through the night without Ada. There were times when he'd simply pause, run out of batteries mid-sentence or find himself staring blankly into space. There were no tears, no sulking and no anger. There was just loss, confusion and loneliness; the three things he despised the most and they were echoing in the space in his heart that the idealised image of his father used to fill.

But when Ada would brush her hand against his body he felt like a toy soldier being wound back up. Her strength had been like a prop for his weakest foundations. He didn't have to ask for her help, she just let him have had waxed lyrical over how much she needed him. He hadn't expected it to go both ways.

With effort, he kicked off his boots and sighed despondently as a chunk of sand dislodged from the heel and scattered across the floor like confetti. He lifted his heavy arm and clasped tightly onto the railing. Then he heaved himself up onto the stairs. In their bedroom he peeled off his shirt and squeezed half a litre of rainwater out of the cotton fabric. He found a t-shirt on the floor that smelt like grass and potato chips.

_Eh. It'll do._

He threw it over his head and wriggled his arms into it. It was inside out. He didn't care.

As he half-stumbled into the hallway he stopped just short of tripping over his daughter as she rocketed from the bathroom and launched herself onto her bed. He chewed his lip as he saw her scamper under her quilt like an animal hibernating for the winter.

'Sorry Peanut,' he glanced at his watch and shook his head mournfully, 'You took _thirty eight_ seconds to get into your PJs.'

Mei Li's eyes were as wide as saucers as she stared up from her plump pillows, 'Not fair.'

'Yeah, fair,' he countered calmly as he circled around her bed and stopped beside her, 'We had a deal.'

'You cheated.'

'I did _not_.'

'Did so.'

'And how do you know that?'

''Cause you're silly. Mommy says so.'

He gasped theatrically and placed his hand over his heart, 'When did she say that?'

'Today, when you flicked food at her and pretended that it wasn't you.'

Leon smirked. During dinner he'd been fooling around and had managed to score a direct hit down the front of her dress with a cookie crumb he'd found. Ada had kicked him under the table for that.

He loomed over her with one eyebrow cocked, 'D'you really think I'm silly?'

Mei Li flicked her tiny pink tongue against the corner of her mouth as she hummed to herself thoughtfully, 'I won't if I get my story.'

The sight of her smile melted him into a pile of goo. He lunged for her and tickled her under her arms. She shrieked and got tangled in the sheets as she squirmed.

'Daddy 'top it!' she laughed and clutched her sides.

'All right. Move over,' he ordered in his best 'cop voice' but the affect was overwhelmed by his mile-wide grin.

He sat on Mei Li's bed with his back against the headboard. Shuffling around, he got comfortable and let the young girl snuggle up next to him with her white teddy bear on her lap. She yawned discretely into his chest.

He did a double take at the rows of books on the shelves by the window. Impressed, he read the spines and felt a giddy sensation coil around him. He recognised every one of these from his own childhood. His mother had given most of their old books away over a decade ago but their pages were tattooed onto his memory.

'Hey, you've got "The Giraffe, the Pelly and Me". That's a classic. Your Aunt Hannah used to make me read that to her,' he smiled as he moved to stand and get a closer look at the collection.

'No, stay,' she wrapped her fingers around a clump of his t-shirt, 'It's better if you make me one.'

'You sure? I could read you "The Three Little Pigs" instead. I'll even do the voices.'

She wasn't impressed with the idea, so he relented and decided to improvise.

'You both ready?' he asked, nodding at the bear.

Mei Li nodded once decisively.

'Fine...uh,' he coughed into his fist as he ploughed his mind for a suitable idea, 'What kind of story would you like?'

'One with magic.'

'Magic? Riiiiight,' he let his head tip back till it rested against the wall, 'Okay. Once upon a time...far, far away...and I mean _far_ away-'

'More far than Washington?'

'Oh yeah,' he replied draping his arm around her, 'This was a far away place where monsters roamed the forests and it was always cold and raining, which made the monsters even grumpier and meaner. On the hill there was this huge castle-'

'With ghosts?'

'Sure, why not? And beyond this castle was an island and it was the perfect hiding place for a...for an evil wizard. This wizard had a magic potion. He spent years mixing everything he could find to make it. He put all kinds of cra- I mean _stuff_ into it, like mud and fish heads and bunny ears.'

Mei Li made a face, but not one of disgust as he'd been expecting. She rested her chin on her bear's head and fixed her eyes on him. She was worryingly fascinated.

'The wizard needed to test his potion so he sent his army to kidnap a princess from a kingdom across the sea,' he continued smoothly as his narrative found a rhythm.

'He wanted to turn her into a frog?' Mei Li asked.

'I guess you could say that.'

'Why?'

'Because he knew that the princess's father would part with all his riches to see her home safe again. The evil wizard wanted the treasure for himself.'

'He sounds mean.'

'Yes he was,' Leon murmured, crossing his feet at the ankle, 'Now the princess's father wanted his daughter back so badly that he sent one of his knights to the island to find her and bring her home.'

'Did he have a horse?'

'Huh?'

'The knight. Knight's have horses.'

'Well...no. But he was new to the job and they hadn't given him one yet. Anyway, the knight left for the far away place. He arrived at the forest and began to search. He looked _everywhere_ for the princess, but all he found were more monsters. There was a giant who could crush the knight with one hand and a creature under the water that could swallow him whole,' Leon drew her a little closer, 'This isn't scaring you, is it?'

'I'm okay,' her pigtails swished from side to side as she shook her head, 'I wanna know what happens. Did the knight find the princess?'

'Yes he did. But he was too late. The wizard had already used his potion on her, so the knight had to work real fast and find a cure. He and the princess travelled through the dark forest and the haunted castle.'

'Did they see any ghosts?'

'There was a lot of creepy stuff around,' he replied with a half smile, 'Like statues that could come to life and chase you down corridors. And there were giant dogs that obeyed their evil wizard master. Believe me they were the kind of dog you'd never like.'

Mei Li smiled, but her eyes were looking hazy. Leon lowered his voice and tightened his grip on her as if they were sharing a secret.

'As they passed through the castle, the knight and the princess were attacked by a...dragon. It grabbed the princess in its big, slimy claws and flew away.'

'The Princess is good at getting kidnapped,' Mei Li pondered out loud, 'What did the knight do?'

'There wasn't much the guy could do. But he wasn't going to give up,' he assured her fervently as he started to get whisked away by his own fantasy tale, 'He carried right on after her. He found out that the princess had been taken to the wizard's island. There was a big ocean between him and the island. He had no way of getting there.'

'He could swim.'

'Eh...No. He's good, but he's not _that_ good,' he shot her a dashing wink and she giggled, 'The knight was close to despair, but then he met someone who helped him.'

'Who?'

He rubbed his lips against each other to buy a little thinking time, 'She was... she was a mysterious sorceress. She had a ship that would take him to the island. She'd come to the far away land to steal the magic potion and defeat the wizard. Since they had similar quests she agreed to help the knight find the lost princess.'

'Was the socess..._sorceress_ pretty?'

'She was beautiful.'

'And why did she want to steal the wizard's fishy potion?'

'Beats me. She had her reasons, though only she knew what they were. Nevertheless, she helped the knight to find the princess and get her a cure before she turned into a frog. But suddenly the wizard jumped out and trapped them,' he continued gesturing wildly with his hands, 'So the knight fought the wizard with all his strength until the skies were black with clouds.'

'How'd he win?'

'How do you know he won?'

'Because he has to.'

'Those the rules, huh?' he replied wearily, almost wishing some things could be that straight forward. Then again, he lived for the challenge, 'You're right Peanut. The sorceress threw the knight a magic sword and he drove it into the evil wizard's heart defeating him forever and ever. As the knight stopped to catch his breath...because he was seriously tired by then and hungry too...the sorceress approached him. And she said that now he had what he'd come for, she wanted one thing in return.'

Mei Li's lips puckered as she realised, 'The fishy potion?'

'That's right. She took the magic potion and before the knight could stop her she turned and ran away. But she'd left him a gift.'

'I like presents.'

Leon lifted his chin and laughed, 'So did he. The sorceress had left him his own horse. Now this was no ordinary horse. It was strong and powerful...and it could gallop along the water faster than anything he'd ever seen. He and the princess rode it home to safety,' he beamed with satisfaction and uttered the most gratifying words of any story, 'The end.'

The girl clapped her chubby hands. She was glowing with contentment as she settled against the mattress and nuzzled her cheek into the pillow. Every time he made her smile it felt like he'd scored a major tick in the 'win' column of his life.

'You liked that?' he asked, kissing her forehead and sliding off the bed. He ducked down to tuck the covers around her.

'Yep.' She replied as she rubbed her nose sleepily.

'And what about your bear? Did she like it?'

'I don't know. She's already sleeping,' Mei Li nudged the limp, stuffed animal who was buried in the covers up to its nose, 'Can I have another story?' she pleaded through a monster of a yawn.

'No Honey. I'm sorry,' he told her firmly as he stroked the tiny shell of her earlobe as it poked out from beneath her dark hair, 'It's bedtime. Come on Mei Li. Close your eyes and sleep tight.'

He knew he'd finally won a round, because this time she didn't argue back.

'Daddy?'

'Yeah?'

'Did the knight ever see the sorceress again?'

'Yes, did he?'

Leon glanced over his shoulder so quickly that he almost pulled a muscle. Her body draped in a thick robe, Ada stood leaning against the doorframe. And she was smiling so broadly that he thought he'd combust with embarrassment.

Knowing that she'd never let him forget this, he tackled her silent teasing with a nonchalant shrug.

'That is another story for another night,' he finally replied as he turned back to Mei Li with a tender smile, 'Goodnight Peanut.'

Ada pushed away from the door and strode into the room, 'Sleep well Little One.'

She kissed the girl's cheek, lingering above her for a moment because it was hard to stop drinking her in.

Mei Li murmured her goodnight and smacked her lips together as she slid into sleep. Leon pulled the cord on her lamp and plunged the bedroom into semi-darkness.

When they were alone in the hall, Ada shoved her hands into the pockets of her robe and rocked gently on the balls of her feet.

'An intriguing tale,' she complimented him dryly, 'You'd have made Tolkien proud. Where _do_ you get your ideas from?'

'I'm going to rise above your sarcasm and point out that it got her to sleep,' he hissed, motioning her away from their daughter's door.

'It was a risk bringing up Spain like that.'

'Didn't you hear how heavily I edited it?' he cocked his eyebrow playfully, 'Besides, laughter's good for the soul and when I've got a choice between that or letting everything beat me you know what I'd pick.'

'True enough. It's the reason I was so shocked when I met Mike for the first time.'

'Why's that?'

She tipped her chin up so that she could look him square in the eye, 'Because he has to be the only man in the world with a sense of humour cheesier than yours.'

He stuck his tongue out at her and a short laugh erupted from her lips.

'Are you makin' fun of me because I didn't read you a bedtime story too?' he narrowed his eyes at her warily as he secretly bubbled over with delight at her teasing him.

'The only story I care about already had a happy ending,' she slipped her right hand from her pocket and squeezed his shoulder.

His breath stuttered in his throat. Without raising his arms from his sides, he edged closer and nuzzled her lips with his mouth. It wasn't a kiss in its purest sense. It was a gesture of affection and solidarity. She parted her lips over his and her nose brushed his cheek as she tilted against him trusting his body to hold her up.

Realising that he'd been holding his breath since she'd touched him, Leon inhaled sharply and the scent of her flooded him. He touched her then, his hand sliding up her hip and tucking under the cord that held her robe closed. The downy texture of her bathrobe carried him back to their morning together against the sheets of their bed; her hot and sticky skin, the wet strands of her hair...

With a final sigh that tickled his ears, Ada drew away from him. Leon squeezed his eyes shut as he lassoed his stampeding libido. When he looked at her she was composed and patient, her control allowing her to dancing circles around him.

Suddenly she slapped her hand to her mouth and yawned between the gaps of her fingers, 'Did you lock up downstairs?'

He shook his head, still finding it difficult to form words with his overly sensitised lips.

'Well,' she smiled at him indulgently, 'It'd be helpful if you did. I'm exhausted. You don't mind do you?'

'No,' he replied, feeling deflated as if his heart had developed a slow puncture, 'You go lie down. I'll take care of things.'

She patted his arm with distant affection and padded silently into their bedroom. She closed the door behind her.

Leon propped his hip against the small table beside the wall. The vase of dried flowers rocked a little against his weight. His taunt features relaxed into a lopsided smile and he combed his hand through his hair. Since he'd woken up under this roof he'd been jumping obstacle after obstacle to earn the right to hold Ada in his arms as they slept. The thought jolted through him like a stray spark. He charged down the stairs and, in the dark, weaved between the furniture as he rattled the locks and tugged the curtains shut. Their home disappeared under a cloak of shadows.

Limping to their bedroom door, he clumsily budged it open. He stopped halfway, not sure if Ada was still awake. Though the desire to slide against her warm body and fall asleep drove through him like a battering ram, splintering every last fibre of his self-control, he didn't want to come barging in and wake her. He had the feeling that Ada didn't like having her sleeping patterns disturbed.

When he'd tried to wake her after she'd been knocked out in Umbrella's lab in Raccoon City she'd mumbled under her breath, rolled over and struck his chest with the back of her hand as if telling him to pipe down and let her rest. He'd been so relieved that she was still alive. As twisted and terrible as the situation had been, they'd scored a small victory together. Joy had surged through him. It was one of the few memories of that day that he cherished.

With care and as silently as he could manage, he pushed the door open all the way. He'd expected to find another blue pool of shadow beyond the threshold, a small lick of light from the window maybe and the red dials on the alarm clock to guide him like a beacon to the edge of the bed.

But what he saw was galaxies away from his expectations.

The bedroom was besieged by white candles. The tables either side of the bed, the vanity, the cabinet and the window seat were smouldering. The combined heat and light of the candles merged to create an intimate enclave that seemed miles from anywhere. A hundred tiny flames cast ripples along the walls and floor. Their bed was freshly made. The new scarlet sheets looked inviting. The scent of vanilla crept through the air, reeling him towards the bed like a dozen fine cords looped around his body. There was something humid and moist about the air and it made his skin feel damp and heavy on his bones. But as he stepped into the room and heard the door swing shut behind him, he felt embraced by something that had been crafted with such love, attention and skill that it humbled him.

He was lost for words before he even set eyes on her.

Ada held a match in her hand as she leaned over the bedside cabinet and lit the final candle on its surface. With a shake of her wrist she extinguished the match and placed it in an empty, shallow dish.

'I'm almost done,' she inclined her head towards him slightly, but didn't make eye contact, 'Hold that thought.'

He wondered which of his thoughts she was referring to. Was it the thought that she looked radiant before the candlelight that accentuated her cheekbones and lips in a way make-up never could? That seeing her like this made him forget what a long day he'd had? Or that the way her long, dark hair covered her neck urged him to submerge his face within the glossy strands? Perhaps that the black lace kimono she was wearing was tied so loosely by the silk belt around her hips that it exposed the valley of pale skin between her breasts and down towards her navel?

She finally turned and caught his reaction. Her serene expression faltered. It was the way he was looking at her, he guessed. If his face showed even a fraction of how captivated he was then she must have known then and there that he was hers.

Ada approached him slowly, something predatory and deliberate in her every step. She stopped just out of arm's reach.

'I promised you,' she told him, her fingers toying with the lacy hem of the kimono that ended inches above her knees, 'I promised that I'd thank you properly for last night. You didn't think I'd forgotten, did you?'

Leon ran his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip, willing himself to reply.

His gaze followed the contours of her figure from her delicate neck to her ankles, 'This is why you wanted me to tell Mei Li a story? So you'd have time to do all this?'

She simply smiled in reply.

'Do you like it?' she asked, following his line of sight, 'I bought it before flying home from Washington. The moment I saw it I knew that you had to see me in it.'

'I should tell you that you look incredible or something,' he rasped softly, 'But I can't think of a single word good enough for you.'

She smiled with pleasure and to his surprise there was a touch of shyness too. He hadn't been expecting that. She seemed anxious that everything was perfect. He was touched, though he felt compelled to reveal that all he needed was her.

'Come with me,' she purred, the words heavy with meaning.

She took his hand in hers and linked their fingers before backing towards the bed and pulling him along with her. The bell-sleeves of her kimono enhanced the exotic flavour that surrounded her like a fine perfume. He followed but his legs felt stiff as if they were spring-loaded.

Once she felt the edge of the mattress against the backs of her calves, Ada stopped and released him so his hands fell to his sides. Then she sat and perched on the end of their bed. She tightly crossed her long legs. Bracing her hands beside her hips, she flexed her fingers and her nails bit into the quilt. The movement was rough, the gesture visceral. He felt like he'd been kicked in the gut.

He began to step towards her but she shot out her right leg, pressing the sole of her foot against his belt. The sensation of her heel prodding against his crotch made him groan, a noise so explosive he felt that it'd left a hole in his chest.

As Ada shook her head, a wisp of hair tumbled down to tickle the skin under her pale green eyes, 'No,' she filled the word with so much power that he didn't dare contradict her, 'You're wearing too much.'

She lowered her foot to the floor and wiggled her ass against the mattress as she sat back further on the bed, 'Take it off,' her order was uttered with a tremble as if she was forgetting how to breath, 'All of it. Now.'

He did as he was told. His hands snatched at the bottom of his t-shirt and he ripped it up over his abdomen.

'Wait,' she stopped him suddenly, 'Not so fast. Do it slowly.'

'Should I be doing this to music too?' he asked huskily as he slid the garment inch by inch along his body.

'That's not necessary,' she replied, pressing her thighs together, 'This'll do nicely.'

'Glad I could oblige,' he balled his shirt up and tossed it to the floor.

His belt was the next to go. Then his pants landed with a thud against the carpet. Her eyes grew wide and sparkled in the candlelight when she saw he was wearing the black boxers she'd laid out for him earlier in the evening. As soon as they were off she kicked them across the room with one swift movement and rose to her feet. Every flavour and facet of her body was a five star feast for his senses, but a simple rule he'd begun to learn since waking up with her is that her eyes, the look that veiled them when she wanted him, made him feel as if he was discovering sex for the first time; a perpetual teenager tracing his eyes along the curl of a feminine hip or the dip between breasts. Ada was letting him know that there was still so much he needed to learn.

'Lie down Leon,' she murmured, stepping away from him as if she couldn't trust herself.

Swallowing a sly grin, he strode towards the other side of the bed, putting as much distance between them as he could. Ada chewed her lip in amusement, realising that he had enough control left to throw a little of the teasing back her way.

He climbed onto the bed and the mattress bowed slightly under his weight. He got as comfortable as he could, which was no mean feat when the woman he loved was straddling him and rocking her pelvis against his hips.

'Holy fu-' he moaned into the pillow beside his head.

She hushed him and laughed, 'I haven't even started. Don't be a baby.'

'Who do you think you're calling a "baby"?'

He bent his knees, pushed his thighs against the curve of her bottom and squeezed her harder against his body. Ada gasped, her palms falling to his chest as she struggled to find her balance.

'You're cheating,' she sounded a little impressed.

'You didn't tell me there were rules,' he shrugged, tapping his fingers in a slow rhythm against her waist and finding the ends of the sash of her lace robe, 'This looks so good on you. But it'd look better on the floor.'

'Not yet,' she enveloped his hands in hers, 'Soon, but not yet.'

She lifted his arms up and over until they rested against the cushions above his head. Then she arced over him, bringing her lips to his. Her kiss was bruising. She'd silently elected not to be gentle with him. Across his jaw and his brow he weathered a storm of her fiery kisses. He clenched his fists and poured every ounce of energy into holding still and not shoving her to the bed and having his way with her immediately. He managed to angle his lips against her shoulder and he exhaled with primal delight as he discovered that his heart pounded in time with the pulse at her neck. She started to up the pace of her body sliding against his.

Without looking he could tell that her robe had slid open. He arched his back and lured her to press her chest against him. The dark beads of her nipples grew hard and swollen. With a hungry growl, Leon began to lower his hands down to cup her breasts, to feel their weight against his palm and marvel at how this amazing woman reacted to the simplest of touches.

But he couldn't.

His eyes shot open the second after he felt his wrist jolt against the restraints.

Momentarily blinded by the light of a thousand candles, Leon felt his vision swim up towards the ceiling. He tipped his head back and saw that both his hands were chained to the headboard by two pairs of fur-lined, red handcuffs. His jaw dropped. He yanked the cuffs hard and they _clanked_ defiantly.

'What?' he tore his lips from her neck and twisted to get a good look at the arrangement of metal and faux-fur, 'When did you do this?' he demanded.

Ada lifted her head and flicked a few tousled locks of hair from her forehead, 'Three...maybe four minutes ago,' she revealed with an impish grin, 'You couldn't tell?'

'I...no,' he squared his jaw and felt discomfort crawling along his skin like a cold chill, 'Why didn't you ask?'

Inhaling through his nose, he tried to control his breathing and bring his pulse below the threshold of a cardiac arrest. Leon wasn't a fan of being tied up in any situation. He didn't mind handing the reigns to a woman because there were always times when it was an advantage, but not a second went by when he didn't feel vulnerable and exposed. His previous girlfriends had assumed that he didn't trust them, when really he simply didn't trust himself.

Ada sat back and discreetly pulled the edges of her kimono together, 'I didn't think I needed to.'

'You should have-' he bit off the end of his reply and forced his hunched shoulders to relax, 'This was a surprise. I'm not angry. I just don't go in for the kinky stuff.'

He pulled a goofy face hoping it'd make her laugh and smooth the frown from her face. But she ignored him and cut her eyes away. She silently reached over and pressed the concealed latch on the handcuffs. They popped open.

'If you're worried about being stuck here you can relax,' she began, waggling the velvety red shackles over his head and smiling weakly, 'There are no keys to lose. All I have to do is release the catch and they're off you.'

Leon nodded and drew his hands away from the bedposts wearily, 'I don't think I'm ready.'

'When will you ever be?' she sighed and flung the cuffs to the edge of the bed.

'It's not that I don't trust you-' he pulled himself up onto his elbows.

'Then what is it? You were enjoying it a moment ago.'

He fell back against the bed and covered his face with his hands. He muffled his groan with his palms and rubbed his tired eyes as he ransacked his mind for any kind of flippant remark that'd get her to start kissing him again. He was desperate to skip this hurdle so they could carry on into the sunset.

'Leon...' Ada clasped his fingers and peeled them from his face, 'Do you honestly believe that without your hands you can't make me happy?'

He shook his head slowly, 'I don't know.'

She brought his fingers to her lips and kissed each of them in turn, 'Please try this, just once. Really _try_ to let go and let me be there for you. Stop pretending that you're okay when you're not.'

He swallowed hard, squirming against the sheets.

'I won't let you down. Please Leon.'

That final plea put him over the edge. It was that tone of voice and that deadly serious look on her face that he remembered vividly from that first hushed declaration.

_I don't want to lose you._

He withdrew his fingers from her hands. Hesitantly he stretched up to hook them around the struts of the headboard. Leon met her gaze and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a half-smile. Ada's eyelids fell closed for a moment and her shoulders sagged with relief.

'Thank you,' she muttered against his lips when she kissed him, 'I won't do anything you won't enjoy. I promise.'

She caressed his face with the back of her hand and her sweet breath warmed his mouth.

Deftly, she wrapped the cuffs around his wrists and fastened them on the bedposts. Leon's chest swelled as he took a calming breath and tested the strength of the metal. Her hands lingered on him and she coaxed him into a state of trancelike anticipation.

_This isn't so bad. One step at a time I guess. _

The shuffling sound of cloth against skin roused him and snatched his attention away from his manacles. He knew what it was without looking and his heart leapt, his pulse galloping along his spine. Beads of sweat erupted from beneath his skin.

Ada had unfastened her robe. She let it flow off her shoulders and pool over his legs. She indulged him, sitting still so he could take her in.

Something every adult learned sooner or later was that anticipation rarely delivered in the way you'd expect. This was no exception, Leon decided. Because what he'd anticipated had been a sorry underestimate and he scolded himself for being so desperately lacking in imagination before. Wearing nothing but candlelight and a smile, she was a goddess.

He noticed something else about her too: the small bump at her navel instead of the shallow dip most people had.

_Huh. Wifey's got an outie._

'What are you thinking about?' she enquired, her eyebrows arching curiously.

'I'm regretting letting you tie me up,' the skin around his eyes creased as he smiled, 'You're stunning.'

Her waist bended like the stem of a flower as she leaned over him, 'You're not too hard on the eye yourself.'

Ada scored her nails against the coarse, golden hairs around his pectorals. Her abdomen was criss-crossed with scars, like fine, white ribbons stretching around her body.

There was an urban legend that all women thought scars were sexy. Leon had trouble finding any of these elusive creatures. A surprising number of his past lovers had been indifferent and some had silently pitied him. Kaitlin had been enthused at the start, romanticising every bullet hole with her imagination, gushing about how brave he was and how proud she was of him. But she'd soon started to insist that they made love with the lights off and that he wore a t-shirt at the beach in case her friends saw them and started asking questions or, worse, asked nothing at all. To her his scars were damage and there came a time when she couldn't endure looking at them and feeling the sadness they provoked.

For the first time he appreciated how she'd felt, but more than that he discovered how little either of them had understood. Looking at Ada now he wanted to know where each and every wound on her body had come from and how they made her feel. He wanted to touch and taste them, starting with the wide slash on her right side beneath her ribs: the injury he'd been present for six years ago. He burned to tell her that they didn't represent damage. They represented a great healing. She was stronger and more glorious because of those wounds and now so was he.

Before his unfaltering, silent worship, she began to shape her body with her hands and drew invisible lines over all the places she knew he wanted to feel her. As his expression grew strained and his forearms trembled, she became all the more invested in pleasing herself and drawing out his agony. It was his reaction that drove her on; it thundered through the bond they shared. Her hands reached the delicate patch of skin between her thighs and she gave a quivering moan. He ground his teeth together and grasped the bedposts in a crushing grip. There was nothing he found more erotic than a woman who knew her own body as well as he could ever hope to.

'Are you punishing me for something?'

'Maybe,' she paused, her eyelids trembling as she fought for control, 'I told you to relax.'

'That's real easy to say when you're not the one chained up.'

'This is only the warm up. But if you can't handle it-'

'No, no, no. I didn't mean that. I just think that you're not taking full advantage of this,' he tugged pointedly at the cuffs.

Ada sat up abruptly and blinked at him, 'You're absolutely right.'

She shuffled past him and reached for the bedside table.

'I'm gonna regret saying that, aren't I?' he chuckled as she revealed a small ceramic bowl she'd hidden behind a stack of candles, 'What is that?'

Dipping her finger into the bowl, she tilted her head towards him and whispered, 'Try it.'

He took her index finger into his mouth and made sure to graze her skin with his teeth.

'Cake icing?' he exclaimed.

'It's the leftovers from earlier,' she explained, wrinkling her nose mischievously, 'Remember when you decided that it'd be clever to lick it off my hands when we were done icing that cake? Consider this your just desserts.'

He remembered how shaken she'd looked and how her cheeks had blushed red when he'd done that to her. It drove him wild that a spur of the moment decision could snowball into a sexual encounter that'd leave him limping for weeks.

With painstaking precision, Ada painted a glittering trail of sugar from his collarbone, between the creases of his abs and to the well of his navel. Her hands were braced either side of his body as she lowered her lips to within tasting distance.

'Now pay very close attention,' her soft breath sailed over his bare chest like freshly spun silk, 'Because when I'm done...' she continued as the tip of her tongue moistened her bottom lip, '...you're going to get the chance to do all this to me.'

_And since this is not an M rated story you'll have to let your imagination take over here!_

_I've wanted to write Leon telling his child a PG-rated story of how he and Ada met for a while now, so as cheesy as it was I couldn't help but slip it in here- I hope you'll indulge me._

_The penultimate chapter will be put up ASAP once it's been tenderly pruned and shaped by my clumsy fingers. Thank you for the reviews as always. It's a relief to know that I'm not the only one who's fallen in love with the Kennedy family _:3


	17. Out of the Fire

Author's mad ramblings: Hello! Sorry this took a while but I've been filling in scary job applications. Thank you for your kind reviews and your unbending patience.

Oh and there's some short **M rated** content in this chapter which I have **bolded** so if you have no interest in reading it simply skip past the **bold** section.

**Chapter 17**

**Out of the Fire**

"_Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. Love still stands when all else has fallen.__"_

_-anonymous_

With the last candle extinguished, he placed it with the others into a metal tin and pressed the lid shut. His nostrils flared slightly at the scent of soot, burnt wax and sweat that lingered in the air. It was a smell that on any other night would make him think of death and destruction, but this room smouldered in the aftermath of an entirely different kind of fire.

Across the room Ada stirred under the sheets he'd draped over her bare body just minutes ago. She kicked her legs out from under them, exposing their mouth-watering length, and allowed her sweat drenched skin to cool. It seemed impossible that an hour ago he'd been licking vanilla icing off that body. A smile tugged at the corner of Leon's mouth as he watched her stretch her limbs out across the mattress and arch her slender back like a cat having her stomach tickled. Watching her made him feel deliciously lightheaded. Now there were parts of him that found her more vital than oxygen.

And he'd never be able to look at a birthday cake again without becoming hopelessly turned on.

The night existed in his thoughts as a series of precious, disjointed pieces and he could dip in and out of his memory as if it was something sweet and forbidden. Even in the dark he could make out every swollen love bite and hickey she'd inflicted on him from his collar to the inside of his thighs. The hairs on his arms stood on end as he remembered Ada's fondness for suckling on his biceps and moaning desperately as if they were the sweetest things she'd ever tasted.

Once she'd finally agreed to remove the restraints Leon had growled the words 'my turn' against her cheek and filled the two tiny words with so much promise that she'd trembled. Snapping the cuffs around her slender wrists he'd felt a surge of power. He'd bathed her in kisses, pausing more than once to watch the candlelight dance between the valley of her breasts and along the crease at her hip as if it was guiding him to where she wanted him to touch her most. Pleasuring her had quickly become an addiction. While there was still breath in his body he wanted to make _her_ breathless. Even now he didn't know what'd possessed him to tickle her under her knees and kiss her toes but he could still hear the rush of her beautiful laughter and feel how the sound drove joy deep into him.

'_You know this isn't fair,' her lips had still quivered even after he'd stopped nibbling at the sensitive patch of skin on the inside of her elbow._

'_Fair?' he'd growled with his mouth against her damp forehead, 'You kept me chained to this bed for an hour and you want to talk about fair?'_

_Unrepentant and intensely pleased, she'd provoked him, purring smugly, 'I couldn't help myself, not when you looked good enough to eat over and over again.'_

'_You and I need to have a little talk about bedroom etiquette,' he'd replied, dragging the tip of his nose along her earlobe._

_Her laugh had been brazen, 'I'm all for fair play, Handsome. I made you beg me to release you,' she'd craned her neck and pressed a hot, wet, open kiss to his jaw, 'Now you play fair. Make me beg.'_

_Heat had risen up from his neck like magma. Their bedroom, he'd learned, was the one place where she didn't try to hide her manipulation of him. Somehow that made him eager to fall for it, hook, line and sinker._

'_All right,' he'd trailed his fingers along her stomach and to her thighs. _

_Immediately she'd gone tense, locking her joints as if to keep herself from writhing beneath him and admitting surrender too soon. _

_Leon hadn't even tried to hold back his proud smile, 'Let's play fair.'_

And if what had come next was _sex_, then he'd been getting the whole act disastrously wrong for the past ten years.

His sex life had always been good; at times verging close to great. Before tonight there'd never been the need to expect more or a reason to believe that _something more _existed. But Ada had proven him epically wrong. Tonight she had plucked him from the ground and thrown him into orbit far above everything he'd ever known. He could never come back down and be satisfied with just the horizon.

From now on he wanted the whole world. He wanted Ada. And if necessary he'd crawl naked across broken glass to get to her.

Suddenly he could _feel_ her waking. Her consciousness was stirring and reaching out to him. The skin on his palms began to itch. She was only meters away but he already missed her. That delirious need to caress her was back and it coaxed him towards the edge of the bed.

_I've only been her husband for a day and I'm already whipped._

With her cheeks flushed and her hair tousled she looked almost vulnerable and this softness collided with the destructive passion she'd shown hours earlier when she'd detonated his erogenous zones one by one. Her right arm was stretched out above her head and her cheek was buried in the pillow. His ears picked out the low undercurrents of her voice as her breathing began to deepen. Leon was sure that Ada wasn't aware of the noises she made in bed or how her ripe and husky singing voice meant that she could actually orgasm in tune. The woman had always had a seemingly endless supply of surprises, and none more achingly beautiful than the ones she'd shown him that day.

She flexed her long fingers and her chest swelled as she woke. Ada began to roll onto her back. Leon's mouth twitched and grew into a satisfied smile when she was jerked awake by the clink of the handcuffs still latched around her right wrist.

Ada arched back her head and frowned at the restraints. She sought him out in the gloom and returned his bright eyed grin with a fierce look that promised retribution.

'Very funny,' she murmured as she used her free hand to release herself.

'Yeah, I thought so too,' he replied as he pulled back the covers and slid in beside her.

Sensing the warmth from his body Ada wiggled closer. The tips of her toes were cold but her hands were clammy. Her body was a cool balm against the heat that was pricking his skin. He pressed his lips to her silky hair and, using his hands, he drew small circles along her waist. The skin at her hips dipped like clay under pressure from his fingertips. Leon's pulse slammed hard at his jaw as if his heart was crawling up his throat. Ada rolled into his arms and the mattress dipped under their combined weight, embracing them both.

As content as he was right now, he also felt restless and eager. He glanced down at her face; shadows picked out the fine laughter lines that their life together had etched around her eyes. He felt the sudden desire to lift her from her slumber with affectionate kisses and to wake her up with slow strokes inside her body. But they'd made love so many times tonight and he didn't want to risk hurting her. Smiling drowsily, he tried to be satisfied with just holding her beautiful body knowing that any minute now he'd wake up and find his arms empty.

Ada nuzzled his chest with her cheek, 'Leon,' her moan feathered out from her lips and swept along his spine, 'You're holding me too tight.'

He forced his arms to relax, 'Sorry Ada.'

'That's better,' she spread her long, supple fingers across his chest, 'You didn't need to put those candles away. I would have done it.'

'Don't worry about it. You've more than earned your keep tonight anyway.'

She kicked him under the covers and he rolled over to muffle his laugh with the pillow. Face to face with her he marvelled at how dark Ada's eyes had become. Her pupils widened into a deep, infinite black and seemed to glitter with tiny specks of starlight. Even the smallest parts of her could become his universe.

**He found it difficult to breathe, as if his ribcage had shrunk two sizes. Without thinking, Leon licked his bottom lip and his hands quivered once against her waist. He couldn't hear the words she was whispering but he understood her all the same.**

'**Are you sure?'**

'**I'm sure.'**

**He didn't know who'd asked and who'd answered. Somehow it didn't matter.**

**When it happened it was unlike anything they'd shared that night. The haze of exhaustion had stripped away the flourishes and art they'd relied upon to excite each other. His desire to join with her and become part of her was primal. Ada looped her arms around his neck and pulled him onto her body. They kissed fiercely, lingering on the taste of their lover's skin. **

'**You still taste like cake frosting,' he whispered into her ear and she began to moan his name as he thoroughly rid of her body of every molecule of sugar his tongue could find.**

**By the time he'd finished he was quivering. His pale skin was feverish and humming red. Ada was arching her lithe spine and sliding herself further down the mattress. He felt the damp patches of skin at the small of her back. Cupping her breasts he teased her nipples with his thumbs and she mewed like a hungry kitten. The sound made him feel like he'd been hit in the gut with a wrecking ball.**

**Ada latched onto his shoulders and captured him with an eager kiss. Reaching up and interlacing his fingers with hers, Leon brought their hands onto the pillow above her head. She bucked against him, not taking kindly to being pinned down again.**

'**I need to touch you,' she demanded hotly, her breath condensing on his mouth.**

'**We don't need our hands for that,' he replied with a level of confidence that surprised them both.**

**As final proof he fit his body into hers and, with movements strong and steady, he made love to her again as if he'd been doing this for years. Beads of sweat raced each other down the length of his back. With their hands restrained they had to make the most of the rest of their bodies. Ada was masterful when it came to this. As athletic as he was, her command of her muscles during sex humbled him. The dewy skin on the inside of her thighs stuck to his sides and her heels dug into his lower back, urging him to move harder and deeper. Their quilt was kicked from their bodies and landed on the floor with a thump. Between every gasp and every whimper she still found time to suck hungrily on his neck and murmur encouragement and instructions against his throat. She was a communicative lover. She spoke to him, asked him for what she wanted, demanded it if necessary. And he always replied; reassuring her, teasing her and adoring her between kisses.**

**They kept almost constant eye contact. This was the most affecting change he'd undergone as a lover that night. Instead of distracting him it had been the catalyst for drawing them closer to each other until he found that everything he felt, the full spectrum of the great and the devastating, he was sharing with her. It was a conscious choice that brought into brilliant focus the strength of the relationship they shared.**

**Not for the first time that evening he wondered if, with a little more effort, he could have reached this level of intimacy with his previous girlfriends. Or more importantly, if he could ever hope to feel this way with anyone else after the night was over. The outlook was frighteningly bleak. **

**He forced the stray thought away and devoted himself to Ada.**

**Her climax broke in waves submerging them both. But when it was over he would have sworn, hand on heart, that the pleasure he'd felt hadn't originated from his body; it had thundered up from his soul.**

**Leon released her wrists and stroked his fingers tenderly along her arms. He pressed his wet forehead against hers and waited for his vision to return. Locking his tongue to the roof of his mouth he tried to dampen down the trembling of his jaw.**

'Ada. You still with me?' he combed his fingers through her glossy hair until her eyes fluttered open.

She stretched and flexed her wrists, her nose bumping against his. Kissing him back, she savoured the weight of his body.

'Of course I am. You think I'd leave you after you perform like that? And to think you had the cheek to ask me why I married you,' she was breathless as she slid her legs off his hips.

'I knew it. You only wanted me for my body,' he grinned deliriously but his voice came out in a hoarse rasp as if his throat was lined with ash.

'Not quite,' she brushed the chilled pads of her toes against the back of his leg, 'But six orgasms in one night is nothing for me to turn my nose up at.'

'Six?' he lifted his head and met her sparkling green eyes. His heart skipped every second beat as he marvelled at how the afterglow suited her so well, 'I counted four.'

'No. It was six. I thought you of all people would be able to tell.'

'In my defence I thought some of them were just one really _long_ one,' he began to chuckle at the sceptical expression on her face.

Her frown dissolved and she wove a lock of his hair between her fingers, 'Do you think it's normal for a married couple to have as much sex as we do?'

He shrugged and rocked his forehead against hers, 'Didn't you once tell me that normal was over-rated?'

'Did I really tell you that?'

'Yeah, and you were right,' his body fell limp as he let her push him onto the mattress and bring the sheets up to cocoon them both. He stretched himself out and lifted his arms above his head as he shuffled around to get comfortable, 'I've tried everyone else's idea of normal. I've been there and I don't want it. I want you. You're _my_ normal.'

She collapsed on the pillows beside him. Her eyes were closed but her lips curved upwards into that sexy, heart-piercing smile, 'I'll try to take that as a compliment.'

'Yeah. You should.'

After a few minutes of silence, broken only by the trickle of water along the gutters outside their window and the squawk of birds waking before dawn, Ada whispered his name.

Leon opened his eyes and waited, not sure if she was talking to him or just muttering in her sleep. A moment later she rolled against his chest and peered at him lovingly.

'We should give it another try,' she told him.

'You don't care if I ever get to sleep tonight do you?' he brushed his knuckles against the nape of her neck.

She shook her head as she covered her mouth to contain a sudden yawn. Then she lowered her cheek to rest on his arm, 'No. I meant a baby. I want another baby with you. When everything with the agency is taken care of, I'm willing to try again...if you want to.'

He stared straight ahead at the ceiling, a rush of thoughts swimming behind his eyes like shadows beneath the surface of the ocean. He could see it all: the next ten...twenty...thirty years with her. He could see their beautiful children. He could see her holding them for the first time. He knew that every hour he spent without them he'd feel less than complete. There was only one answer he wanted to give, but he felt he had no right to because there would be a tomorrow _him_, but not for _them_.

Ada was already asleep when he turned back to her. He sighed, unsure if he was relieved or disappointed. Her eyelashes were a lush, black fan against her pale cheeks.

Leon silently begged her to open her eyes. Tonight he'd told her a thousand times that he wanted her, but not once had he admitted how deeply he loved her. Still as he reached for her, he caught the smallest of smiles playing along her lips and he realised that she already knew how he felt. She was one step ahead of him, as usual.

For what was left of the night, he stayed awake, holding her close and treasuring each second they shared. Every few minutes his eyes would snap open in a panic expecting to find the magnolia walls of his apartment and a mattress stuffed with government dossiers. Somehow he was being kept here; he was straddling one world and another. It wasn't a question of _if_ he'd ever wake up. It was a question of _when_.

He rubbed his tired eyes and inhaled the wet, pine scent of the morning. It was almost four am. Cupping Ada's supple body in front of his, he rolled her off his chest and let her settle against the pillows. He kissed her shoulder and a low moan rose up his throat; no goodbye between them had ever felt right. This was no exception. She stirred as he left her side but she didn't wake.

His eyes lingered on her as he found his underwear and robe at the foot of the bed and began to dress. There was one last thing he needed.

Mei Li was exactly where he'd left her earlier that night. His daughter was in a restless sleep and half-buried under her quilt. Her thick hair was more unruly than her mother's but the two shared the same habit of hogging the covers. She twisted onto her side and whimpered. Her breathing was irregular and laboured. A deep longing drew him to his little girl. She was the product of a thousand battles that he and Ada had faced together; battles he feared would never happen.

_Man, I'm really gonna miss you Peanut._

Treading soundlessly on the thick rug, Leon took the wooden chair from the corner and placed it next to her bed. He lowered himself gingerly onto it and noticed Mei Li's white bear had been kicked to the floor. Grabbing the plush, furry toy by the arm he tucked it beside her under the blankets. He pulled back his hand as Mei Li fidgeted onto her side and migrated towards the stuffed animal. She enveloped it into a possessive hug and gradually she began to calm down. His concerned frown relaxed into an affectionate and doting smile. He stroked her hair with the backs of his fingers. As he watched her settle into a peaceful sleep he thought of his baby sister and that night twelve years ago when he'd snuck into her room to watch over her.

'It's true what they say,' a voice echoed his thoughts out loud, 'The more things change, the more they stay the same.'

Leon's hand stilled and he clenched his jaw. His spine felt like an iron rod; his body forbid him to turn around and acknowledge the voice of his father. He felt a pain in his chest as though the seams of his heart were being picked apart with a rusty knife. A voice deep within him branded him as a coward for just sitting there, but it wasn't enough to make him move.

'It's okay,' Nathan Kennedy sounded closer now, 'I haven't come to ask for your forgiveness. I don't want what I don't deserve. Understand?'

Leon pursed his lips and his head bobbed in a short nod.

His father's breathing steadied at his son's simultaneous defiance and obedience, 'No answering back? One day as a dad and you're already wiped out.'

Nathan laughed uneasily and a faint smile ghosted onto Leon's face before melting away. He curled his fingers around Mei Li's tiny hand drawing strength from the love he felt for her.

'When I saw you again,' his father stayed behind him, finding it easier to talk to the back of his head, 'I expected to feel ashamed of myself. But instead you made me proud, even though I had no right to feel that way about you.'

Straightening his hunched back, Leon took a deep breath to loosen the sharp knots that clung like thorns to his insides.

'I'm sorry,' Nathan exhaled shakily, 'I left you with a burden when you were five and, despite everything, I've done the same to you know. You probably don't even know which way is up anymore.'

Leon sat back in his chair and brought both sets of fingertips to his mouth. He closed his eyes and rocked gently forward and back, his body swaying no more than an inch back and forth as he considered how much had changed this past month and wondered whether the world he woke up to would be same one he'd fallen asleep in.

He lifted his head and opened his eyes. Without turning around he replied steadily, 'You're only half as bad at this as you think you are.'

'Do you mean that?'

'Yeah,' Leon's hands fell to his lap and he blinked through tired eyes, 'I needed to know this. I didn't want to, but I needed to.'

'And what is that you know?' he asked quickly in a hushed voice, sounding apprehensive.

'That what I have now is nothing compared to what I could have,' Leon answered fluently, 'And that between Ada and me there is something...something it would take me a lifetime to comprehend. If we ever get the chance. And if she'd want me.'

'After all this you're still pessimistic?'

'Look at her,' Leon nodded at the sleeping girl in the bed in front of them, 'Look at all this. Now ask me again why I'm still pessimistic.'

There was a ruffle of cloth against skin as Nathan moved to stand closer to his son. Leon felt the warmth radiating from his father's body. His essence and his character had become so much stronger after his death, giving Leon the hope that when he woke at the very least his father would stay close by and not vanish as the rest was bound to.

'Then you still don't understand at all,' his father's deep voice was heavy with finality, 'It's only a dream if you don't act on it.'

'And with great attempts it's glorious even to fail?' Leon replied dully, 'I've heard it all before.'

'It's never that simple,' Nathan sniffed and Leon could picture his familiar smirk, 'The biggest mistake I ever made was trying to do it all by myself. You're the same as me Leon. You shrug off your losses with a smile and you suffer alone and you're weaker for it, believe me. But tonight for the first time you let yourself be vulnerable with another person.'

Leon's eyes stung and, mortified, he realised that the browbeating exhaustion had gotten to him. His throat was aching and his chest felt compacted as if he was lying under a cement block. The image of his daughter wavered before his eyes and he knew that if he reached for her there'd be nothing but air. Hot tears, one by one, splashed onto his cheek and rolled off his chin. It felt pointless to hold them back now. He shivered so hard he felt his teeth rattle.

'You're not alone. You were never meant to be,' Nathan's strong hand gripped his shoulder and stilled his trembling body, 'It's okay. Everything's going to be okay. You'll see.'

His fingers felt swollen and heavy, but Leon managed to lift them and clasp clumsily at his father's hand. He held on tight, squeezing with all the energy he could draw. Before he was expelled from his dream Leon caught a glimpse of the part of himself that he'd never truly outgrown: the five year old boy still waiting patiently for his father to come home. But now, finally, he could say goodbye to them both.

---

He came back to himself gradually this time, as if he was being poured back into his own body like water into a jug. At first his eyes refused to open. They were fused shut after a night of messy dreams and tangled emotion. His hands felt thick and clumsy as he threw them over his face and rubbed his eyelids until they parted. The ceiling above reeled away from him. The white walls swam back, making the room expand and giving him some much needed space. He inhaled a long breath and smiled lazily at nothing in particular.

Lying on his back for a full minute he thought over and over again:

_It's so damn good to be back._

He'd expected to feel disappointed and angry once he returned, but he wasn't. He didn't have a wife or a daughter, but he had the state of mind of a husband and a father. He was hungry for a purpose beyond protecting the families of others. If he didn't find a way to quench his own soul then it'd shrivel up completely. He wouldn't let that happen and he winced at how careless he'd been. Now he could see how much he'd let his friends and family slide away and how that had damaged him in ways he hadn't realised until tonight. There had to be a way to reconcile his disparate parts; to do his job well and find meaning in his personal life. But he knew it wouldn't be easy.

Leon rolled onto his side and stood. His legs felt thin and wasted as if he hadn't used them in weeks. The bare floorboards were cold and covered in grit. He made a mental note to go out and buy a rug. Maybe two. And some paint. He needed a lot of paint. His apartment had to be brought back to life. He'd left it empty for far too long.

He fumbled on his wrist for his watch. It was ten to eight. He'd lived a full day in the space of nine hours. With a soft snort he realised he could still smell Ada's perfume as if she really had been sleeping beside him all night. Glancing over his shoulder he saw that Tess's bed was empty and the bedroom door was wide open. As he left his room he gave his phone a casual glance. There was nothing from Dumont yet. No missed calls or messages at all. Leon's features tensed into a frown. His investigation wasn't over yet.

'Tess. Tessa!' he whistled for his dog and lumbered towards the kitchen where he expected to find her slouching miserably beside an empty bowl.

He was half right. Tess's slender body was stretched out across the tiled floor but her nose was buried in her food dish. It scraped the floor as she knocked it back and forth by licking the inside and savouring each meaty chunk. The smell of gravy and beef flavouring was thick in the air. Leon clicked his tongue against the inside of his cheek and his eyes roamed the room. He was sure her bowl had been empty when he'd gone to sleep. As he walked closer Tess, without lifting her head, began to growl instinctively.

'It's okay. I prefer toast to horse meat in the morning,' he told her wearily.

He tipped up the lid of the bin and saw a discarded tin of senior dog food on top of the pile. His stomach suddenly felt hollow and he let the lid drop shut. Calmly, he strode to the front door and checked the lock. It was secured from the inside. Nothing was out of place or missing either. His computer, his work and his files were all accounted for. None of them had even been moved. There was nothing to suggest that someone had come into his apartment as he'd slept. It was possible that he'd fed Tess on autopilot before going to bed but just didn't remember. He hadn't been thinking straight last night. That was the only scenario that made sense.

Nevertheless, he felt uneasy.

_Come on. You think an intruder broke into your house to feed your dog? Don't be a dick._

Shaking his head, Leon made a beeline straight for the bathroom. Still tense, he threw open the doors to the cabinet above the sink and dug out a pack of disposable razors. His lips twisted as he inspected the cheap plastic and compared it to the powerful electric razor he'd used in his last dream. Blindly, he knocked the cabinet door closed and started to tug open the packet. His eyes rose to the mirror and he blinked at his tired reflection. When he saw his face for the first time that morning he did a double take. His body jolted so suddenly that the plastic packaging ripped in two and spewed its contents into the sink.

Leon dropped the shredded bag and ran out of his bathroom. He bolted past Tess. She yelped, stuck her gravy-covered nose up and scurried after him. He snatched at the handle of the door to the balcony and dragged it back. He'd forgotten to lock it. He scowled inwardly at his sloppiness but the irritation passed quickly. He decided to focus on the consequences of his actions rather than admonish himself all day. The chill autumnal morning nipped hungrily at his bare arms and legs when he stumbled outside. Cars wove through the streets below his feet and the sky was white and mottled with grey clouds.

He wrapped his fingers around the railings that circled the balcony and drank in a lungful of sooty air. His cheekbones rose as he smiled and he felt the mark on the right side of his jaw glow like a hot brand; he'd seen it in the bathroom mirror. Blood red against his pale skin, like a piece of wax used to seal only the most intimate of messages, was a perfect silhouette of Ada Wong's lips. He recognised their shape, the soft swelling of her bottom lip and the arch at the top of her mouth as distinctive as a fingerprint. Last night she'd been in his apartment, in his bedroom and by his side. She'd kissed him. And then she'd fed his dog.

Leon's gaze swept knowingly along the fire escape that led down to the alleyway at the back of his apartment block. There was something knee-buckling about a woman who'd rather scale up the face of a building than use the stairs. Tess shuffled up behind him and he felt the wet tip of her nose nudging the back of his leg.

He glanced over his shoulder, 'Some guard dog you are.'

She barked her excuse and shrugged her lean shoulders at him.

He turned and rubbed her head affectionately, 'She didn't happen to tell you why she was here, did she?'

Tess was silent.

'Thought not.'

As recently as a few months ago he would have felt threatened and suspicious at Ada setting foot in his home and invading his private life in the way she had. Now things had changed. _He_ had changed. Why she'd visited his apartment last night was the latest in a long list of questions he still burned to ask her, but the suspicion and the fear had melted away like an empty storm cloud. The seed of trust that had been forged in blood and fire between them six years ago was finally beginning to bloom into something more permanent. His father had told him faith was something you saw with your heart, not with your eyes. Now Leon realised that his heart was the only part of him that truly understood Ada and this was enough for now.

The droning buzz of his phone shook him out of his own mind. Leon marched back inside and found his cell phone illuminated and vibrating a path along the table. Immediately he knew it was Jean Dumont with the results of his investigation. He snatched up the handset and flicked it open. There was a message. One line. Three words:

_Drinks on me._

Leon's stomach folded in on itself but his expression remained neutral. Distantly he realised how obscene it was to have three short words spell out the fate of a colleague. Betrayal wasn't usually so mundane.

_Maybe next time you'll get a parade of lights and a tap dance, _he thought cynically.

When Leon had originally contacted Jean with his theory about the Umbrella mole in the CIA his fellow agent had been a model sceptic, but his keen mind had spotted an opportunity and he'd made a bet. If Leon was wrong about everything then he owed Dumont a night of heavy drinking the next time the Frenchman visited the States. But if Leon was right...'Drinks on me.'

Snapping the phone shut, Leon left it spinning on the tabletop as he ran to get dressed. He knew he had to act. Fast.

---

In the years that followed Leon thought often of what happened later that day. Though he never asked himself if acting sooner would have made a difference and saved a life, the question was very much implied. Knowledge, skill and determination only get you so far, but timing is everything.

After he'd grudgingly washed Ada's lipstick off his face the day had taken on the dubious distinction of being one of the few times in his life that was neither a blur like his father's funeral nor as crystal clear as his first and last night in Raccoon City. He didn't remember the drive to CIA headquarters in Langley or his security checks at the front door, these were all a hazy fog in his memory. But he did remember that Jennifer from the front desk had been wearing her favourite navy sweater. He'd complimented her the first time he'd seen it because it brought out the blue of her eyes. Jennifer had laughed and smacked him on the shoulder playfully before telling him: _'I've been with the CIA for thirty years. I must have heard that line a dozen times! Shame on you. I'm old enough to be your mother.'_ At the time he'd only been with the secret service for a week and he'd blushed hotly at his unconscious, autopilot flirting, blaming his shiny new badge for the sudden spike in his confidence.

But as he arrived at Langley Jennifer's electric blue eyes were pale and framed with red. Dried tears smudged her spectacles. Ingrid Hunnigan sat beside her on one of the grey couches in the foyer outside Drew Mitchell's office. Hunnigan pressed a dry Kleenex into Jennifer's trembling hand and briefly locked eyes with Leon as he joined the throng of bodies that formed a perfect semicircle three bodies deep around them.

'Jenny found him this morning,' a man in a grey shirt that looked slept in mumbled to the younger agent at his elbow.

'Damn,' she replied, her sigh whistling out of her narrow nose, 'Who told you that?'

Leon inclined his head towards the pair, his mouth feeling parched as if he'd just swallowed half of the Sahara.

'Gavin. He heard her screaming,' the crumpled grey shirt replied, 'Poor woman. She was bringing Mitchell his morning coffee and spilled it all over her hands when she saw the...mess.'

'Why'd he do it?'

'Why does anyone do it? I think I'd rather not know.'

_Me too,_ Leon thought and felt a heavy ache burrowing into his chest. But it was a hollow wish. He'd rejected the bliss of ignorance five days ago when he'd started looking deeper into the personal life of his mentor Director Drew Mitchell, the man who had recruited him into the government. It struck Leon that he knew so little about the man who'd influenced his professional life, refereeing him from the sidelines year in, year out like a proud parent. The night of Ashley's homecoming party, Leon had taken a cab to Langley to see Mitchell, for reassurance, for distraction, for guidance. That night, before swallowing what had to have been his fourth glass of bourbon, Mitchell had told Leon about his daughter Lillian who'd died of leukaemia at age twelve.

He'd lied. There was no record of a child fitting Lillian Mitchell's description in any children's cancer ward ten years ago in the Washington area. The only record of her illness was the entry on her death certificate. A death certificate signed by a Dr Martin Scarlatti. The same Martin Scarlatti that Zoë, Billy Cohen's enigmatic contact, had told him was under Wesker's payroll; the same Martin Scarlatti he'd been chasing through cyber space for weeks. Ada's intel had led him to Project Lazarus, Lazarus had led him to Zoë and Zoë had led him to Scarlatti. Combined it was all one unholy mess; a web of money that the corrupt stuck to like dead flies.

'I want everyone out of here. Clear the corridors. Give the coroner a clear path,' Leon recognised the no-nonsense hiss of Agent Rick Harris, the Head of the Anti-Umbrella Taskforce.

His deputy nodded and began directing her agents with rapid hand gestures as though every second counted. Leon had to hand it to Harris, however reluctantly. The man ran a tight ship.

The swarm of spectators began to dissipate. The grey shirt and his companion were the first to go, but half of the men and women that had gathered stood defiant and angry, barking questions in Harris' direction. Director Mitchell had been too popular to go out without a fuss despite the fact that he'd been discrete enough to use a silencer when he'd decided to take his own life.

Harris looked like he hadn't been home for a while; a grey dust of patchy, uneven stubble ruined his usually clipped and well-oiled appearance.

'I know you all have questions,' Harris cut above the wave of voices, 'But this is a restricted investigation. We take the loss of an agent seriously...no matter the circumstances. All I can tell you is that at approximately seven fifteen this morning Director Drew Mitchell died from single gunshot wound to the head. Initial evidence suggests it was self-inflicted.'

'What the fuck is it with that conclusion?!' exploded Arthur Suko, a young Asian-American agent who'd been plucked from the Marines to join the agency at the same time as Leon's recruitment, 'There's no way he'd do that. He had a family!'

Leon knew Suko wasn't referring to Mitchell's wife. Besides, from what Leon had been able to gather, Gail Mitchell had walk out on her husband six months ago effectively ending their marriage after years of unsuccessful therapy following the death of their only child. The impending divorce must have been one of the many reasons that Mitchell had refused to leave the office most nights. He'd been reluctant to swap his office chair for the now empty marriage bed under his roof. His real family was the agency; every man and woman in every district and in every department; which made his betrayal even harder for Leon to accept, even though it was written in blood.

'We're not ruling out foul play if that's what you're getting at,' Harris replied bleakly, sounding like a coroner's report, 'Internal affairs is committing all of its resources into finding-'

A tide of dissident voices drowned his final words.

'We're not civilians Harris. We won't eat up the party line. It doesn't take a genius to work out why you've been meeting with the directors all month and checking up on Mitchell,' Suko continued, encouraged by the band of agency staff behind him whose jeers of support punctuated his sentences, 'There was a witch-hunt going on. The guy's been through hell and your boys just had to drag him back in, didn't ya?!'

'What are you suggesting?' asked Harris looking genuinely interested in what the man had to say, as if this was a polite debate over coffee and stale croissants at a board meeting.

Feeling increasingly patronised, Suko's fine boned face was drawn taunt and he took on the look of an angry cat, 'What I'm _suggesting_ is that if Mitchell did what you're _suggesting_ he did, then he was driven to it and your guys were behind the wheel.'

'Fascinating,' Harris nodded calmly, his eyes scanning the crowd and settling on Leon. He smirked at Leon's stoic expression, 'What about you Agent Kennedy? Do you think Agent Mitchell, a Gulf War Veteran who's served with the CIA for decades would suck on the business end of his own piece because he thought I was bullying him?'

Leon didn't answer, but his gaze hardened at Harris' flamboyantly lack of sympathy. Suko's reaction was less understated. It took three other agents to hold him back when he went for Harris' throat. Two of Harris' agents reached for their firearms but Harris waved them off and told Suko and the others to take a very long coffee break.

Spitting a burst of Japanese words, as sharp edged as broken glass, Suko followed the others as they spilled out of the foyer. Leon chose not to follow them and if Harris minded he didn't bother to show it.

'I thought you'd be more surprised about this turn of events Agent Kennedy,' Harris used the heel of his palm to smooth back his thin, slick hair after it had been ruffled during his brief skirmish with Suko, 'I'd assumed you and Mitchell were close.'

'Not close enough, obviously,' Leon replied, his eyes on Hunnigan and Jennifer as they were the last to leave the room.

Harris' men busied themselves taking notes and supervising the crime scene investigators. They pretended not to listen to their superior going toe to toe with the younger agent whose name was another word for 'trouble' in Harris's personal dictionary.

'Obviously,' Harris agreed.

He leaned wearily against one of the vacant desks but his steely eyes still glinted in the overhead lights.

'So, any theories?' he prodded Leon further, 'Don't stonewall me. A man you've known for years, a decorated officer in both the military and the government, comes into his office one morning before his secretary, unpacks his briefcase, pours himself a latté and then ventilates his skull. And what? You've got nothing?'

Leon wiped his hand over his mouth and stepped forward, 'I'm not doing this.'

'Doing what?'

'Battling you.'

'Battling me?'

'Yeah,' Leon smiled humourlessly, 'It's not as much fun this time round.'

Harris returned the grin but it slipped easily from his face as if it was made of ice. He reached into his jacket pocket and plucked out a cigarette, 'My only vice,' he muttered as he popped the white stick into his mouth, 'Besides, I don't think Mitchell's going to mind,' he continued nodding at the corpse on the gurney being wheeled through the office door across the room.

Leon's stomach sank as he watched an army of white coats guide a trolley to the service elevator in the back. A sheet was tucked neatly over Mitchell's corpse. Leon closed his eyes and didn't open them again until he heard the elevator doors close.

_Damn it, Drew. You should have waited. I could have..._

There was one thing he could have done if he'd arrived a day earlier. He would have had no choice but to come clean about what he knew. He'd have had no option but to out Mitchell as an Umbrella conspirator and a mole within the CIA responsible for passing on information that had lead to the deaths of over a dozen agents.

'Don't be so hard on yourself. Statistically speaking men of Mitchell's psychological profile don't survive well in a prison environment,' Harris declared with grim finality, 'He took the logical way out.'

'That's a clean way of looking at it.'

'Thank you,' Harris reached back and tapped his cigarette ash into the potted fern on the desk behind him, 'Judging from your lack of indignation at the idea of your mentor betraying the government, I can only conclude that you knew before you set foot in here.'

'Yes. I found out this morning,' Leon decided to answer the question directly and honestly rather than charge blindly through the familiar minefield of an argument with Rick Harris. With a few choice words the man could have you digging your own grave and then send you spinning into it.

'How convenient,' he replied sounding so sweetly pleased that it made Leon sick to his stomach, 'So, how'd you do it? Magic Eight Ball?'

'You tell me. I know you were having me watched.'

Harris' thin eyebrows flinched and he rolled the cigarette between his lips to buy a second or two, 'I wasn't trying hard to hide the fact. For the record, all work and no play has made Leon a very dull boy. You must have visited your dry cleaner three times this week.'

'I needed some air.'

'Try opening a window.'

Leon painted on a smile so tight that his lips felt like rubber bands.

He narrowed his eyes and folded his arms over his chest, 'And how long have you known about Mitchell?'

'Oh,' Harris glanced at his watch, 'For about three hours, thirty two minutes. I _knew_ the moment Mitchell redecorated his office with his own brain matter. But I've _suspected_ for a year and one month,' he stabbed the half-finished cigarette into a nearby plant pot and explained, 'I never smoke a whole one in a single go.'

'A year and a month? You mean since the Anti-Umbrella group lost its first team in Sri Lanka?'

Three men, two women. One derelict factory south of Colombo in the middle of the night. The explosion that had claimed their lives had been blamed on rebel factions within the country's fractured political system. But who'd blow up an empty factory ten miles from anywhere? Who'd have known where the team would be spending the night when the decision had been made only that morning? There was only once place the leaked information could have come from so quickly: the agency. And Mitchell, their superior officer, had been the one who'd delivered their whereabouts to Umbrella and effectively set the time and place of their execution.

Leon swallowed his feeling of disgust and it collided with his stomach like a cannonball.

'Mitchell wasn't my only suspect. Any number of agents in this building had access to our records,' Harris continued as his face twisted with disappointment, 'That's the problem. We got sloppy thinking that just because Umbrella was on the run we'd have an easy time wiping away the last of its stains. But I've got to admit, Mitchell was the last on my list.'

Leon would have added a 'same here' to the conversation but he left it unsaid and approached Harris to sit across from him on the desk opposite. He could see through the wide gap in the open door to Mitchell's office. The faint hint of blood and gunpowder had been smothered out by the smog from Harris' cigarette. Maybe that's why the guy had lit up in the first place. Leon thought back to the banks of heavy antique furniture and high-spec computers lining Mitchell's empty room. The office had taken on a dark and hollow feel after the man's death leaving it like a tomb; a grotesque memorial to the career he'd let rot in the ground.

From what Leon had been able to piece together Mitchell's decision to become a mole for Umbrella had begun a decade before Raccoon City was destroyed. His daughter Lillian had been born three months premature and seriously disabled. Due to her small size, weak internal organs and poor brain development no doctor had felt comfortable performing surgery or doing anything beyond advising Mitchell and his wife to 'prepare for the worst'. A week later Mitchell had received a call. A doctor from a private scientific enterprise called Omni-Pham had offered to not only save Lillian's life but to raise her standard of living to that of any healthy child. That doctor's name was Martin Scarlatti.

Only after Mitchell had mentioned that he worked with Omni-Pham had Leon made the connection. Both Ada's research and the material Leon had pulled up on Scarlatti mentioned Omni Pham. Officially the organisation was a small scale group of international but obscure scientists specialising in genetic and medical research using unconventional materials: from enzymes found in tropical plants in the Amazon to poisons extracted from marine life in the deepest, most inaccessible corners of the ocean.

They'd been investigated for charges of animal cruelty and unethical experimentation twice in the past decade but had sailed through without charge. This controversy shrouded three equally damaging secrets the company kept.

First, Dr Scarlatti's real name was 'Julius Ivanova' and he was wanted for three counts of assault, kidnapping and medical malpractice. Omni-Pham paid him a 'consultancy fee' every month into his Swiss bank account, but officially their human resources department denied knowing the man even existed.

Second, their logo appeared under the classified documents for Project Lazarus that Ada had given him. Omni-Pham and Scarlatti were involved in whatever the hell Lazarus was supposed to be and as far as Leon was concerned a classified, semi-military operation with a pompous sounding name undertaken by a pharmaceutical company never ended well.

Third, when Omni-Pham had been originally set up in the early 1970s one of their board members had been Ozwell Spencer, the CEO of Umbrella. Apparently Spencer had sold his shares and cut all ties with Omni-Pham in the early 1990s. But Leon called bullshit on that. Spencer was Omni-Pham's shadow and probably had his fingers in several smaller companies around the world. Umbrella was far from finished. It was alive and spreading across the globe like a virulent strain of bacteria.

Omni-Pham and Dr Scarlatti had saved Lillian Mitchell's life using their ground-breaking research and they had asked for payment in return. Director Mitchell had repaid his debt with government secrets even after the eventual death of his daughter, until the weight of his guilt had broken him.

'How much damage did he do to the task force?' Leon asked.

'Enough,' was all Harris was planning to share on that topic, 'Did you know that Mitchell was the one keeping you back from joining the Anti-Umbrella project? He used his influence to persuade the directors to refuse your application.'

'I figured as much,' he replied casually, but the bitterness stuck like a blade in his throat, 'So, are you saying that without Mitchell's interference you would have accepted me?'

'No. No I wouldn't have.'

'Can I ask why not?'

Harris gave a reply sounding so rehearsed that Leon expected to hear applause when the man finally finished, 'Let's see. You're cocky. You have a smart mouth. You make decisions based on gut instinct and that, on a good day, gives you a fifty-fifty chance of being right, which is fine when the chips fall in your favour. But, and trust me on this, when they don't agents like you-'

'What the hell d'you mean by that?'

'-Let me finish! Agents like you will wallow in bars wondering exactly how disobeying protocol just for the thrill of it could have ended so badly. You take every defeat personally and it chips away at you. So you develop the martyr complex and you burn out early or spend the rest of your life behind a desk until the day you finally decide to take a swan dive off a roof because you just can't live with your self-destructive need to play the hero. And _lastly_, you can gamble with your own life and you do it well. But that's not what I need. I don't need heroics. I need results by any means necessary. You don't have the stones to take action that would result in collateral damage, you just don't,' Harris exhaled through his wide teeth and slowly shook his head, 'I need discipline, not scruples.'

Leon moved to reply with a succinct and snarling 'fuck you,' but he restrained himself for a moment, patting down the bristles that Harris's comments had set on end, 'You think the big, messy decisions are beyond a guy like me?'

'Yes. That's no insult. I swear up and down,' Harris signed a quick cross over his chest, 'You're good at cleaning up the mess, but I need someone who can keep the mess from happening altogether. I need someone who thinks like an Umbrella operative.'

Ada immediately sprang to Leon's mind and with a sinking heart he started to wonder if he really had a place in this new fight against Umbrella. The players had evolved and though he'd changed enough so that his own mother had trouble recognising him, his career was still in its infancy.

'Maybe you're right,' he finally replied, 'But for the past month I've been disobeying direct orders from two of my superiors to stop my investigations into Umbrella and I was prepared to hand over evidence that would ruin the career of the man I considered a friend and who was responsible for my place within this agency.'

Leon reached into the front pocket of his jeans and dug out the black canister containing Ada's microfilm and a silver USB stick containing all of his research, 'And if that wasn't enough,' he continued, 'I'm handing over what little leverage I have to a man who'd be happy to have me reprimanded just to wipe the smile off my face.'

He leaned forward and dropped the microfilm and data stick beside Harris. Then he drew himself up to full height.

'This is everything?' Harris's pin-prick black eyes inspected the material with a look of bored indifference but his fingers twitched as if he couldn't wait to study it.

'Everything I have,' Leon confirmed, 'No strings attached.'

He was torn inside out with the need to find Dr Scarlatti and to discover whether Omni-Pham's research had anything to do with what had happened in Spain. Nevertheless, he knew he was making the right decision and ironically it'd been Mitchell's advice that had persuaded him. The agency always came first. There was no room for personal vendettas.

Harris smoothly pocketed the information, 'By rights I should have you arrested for withholding information and jeopardising a year long investigation.'

'If you wanted to do that you would have done it weeks ago.'

'Good point. But this isn't over,' he accentuated his threat with another iceberg smile.

Leon nodded and, with a quiet sigh through clenched teeth, took a path towards the elevator.

'Out of curiosity, why do you think Mitchell killed himself?' Harris asked, but this time without a trace of contempt in his voice, 'Was he feeling guilty or simply terrified at being found out?'

Halting mid-step, Leon turned and met him with a level gaze, 'Neither. He always knew that it was going to end this way,' he hesitated as he remembered the drained and defeated look in Mitchell's eyes and the alcohol on his breath the last time he'd seen him, 'It was the choice he made the minute he signed himself over to Umbrella. He was honest enough to realise that'

'You sound like you admire him.'

'No, I don't. Mitchell's decision has destroyed lives, his own included, and threatened the sanctity of this agency. But he gave up everything for his daughter and even though what he did sickens me, I'm growing to understand that that depth of love can make a person capable of anything.'

Harris rolled his eyes towards the floor and chewed over Leon's response, 'That won't be much of a comfort to most people here once the dust has settled and the internal investigation gets underway,' he lifted his head and chuckled silently to himself, 'At least some good came out of this. With Mitchell gone I'll finally get a bigger office.'

Leon didn't bother to comment. He tossed a look over his shoulder and set his eyes on the elevator doors. He wanted out of here now and he'd tackle anyone who was stupid enough to block his course. The magnitude of Mitchell's betrayal was dawning on him now. It was easier to think of it as an abstract concept when there was no name or face attached to the whole episode. At a revised count he'd dusted off the ugly truth surrounding two important figures in his life; Mitchell and his father. And all in a single day.

_Maybe if I work really hard I'll be able to prove that my mother was the one who assassinated JFK from behind the grassy knoll. Why not go for the hat trick?_

'I know exactly what your kind think of me Kennedy,' Harris spoke up again, slouching comfortably against the desk and mocking Leon's impatience to leave, 'Believe it or not, subtly isn't your strong suit. And you know what? I don't give a shit. I'm not in the CIA to make friends. You think I'm an asshole now, what till you've worked for me for a few weeks then you'll really hate my guts.'

'Wait. Are you...?' Leon blinked at him and gave his head a quick shake in disbelief, 'Are you hiring me? I thought you didn't want me on the task force.'

'Back then, true. But things have changed. The task force will be under review and we'll be recruiting again,' he rubbed the back of his hand against the five o'clock shadow around his chin, 'If you're up for the recruitment process that is. It's a little more rigorous than a simple question and answer session.'

He nodded once, determined not to let his excitement show, 'Okay. It's not like I've got anything to lose.'

Whether it was his honesty over his activities or his self control when it came to facing Harris, Leon wasn't sure what had changed the man's mind. But he knew better than to push his luck and ask. He'd just add that question to the list.

_Be honest Leon. If you had all the answers your life'd be boring. It's people like Ada and Harris that keep your battery juiced._

'Where are you headed in such a hurry?' Harris enquired as he watched Leon stride towards the elevator.

Without stopping, Leon shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and his features relaxed into a wry smile, 'I'm going to take my vacation.'

---

In case the end of the chapter wasn't clear enough, Leon's friend and superior, Agent Mitchell, was the Umbrella mole that Ada's message eventually led him too. This was only supposed to be a subplot but I don't think I planned it as well as I'd have liked to, hence the slight confusion. And it's been so long between updates I won't blame anyone who has forgotten about it completely :D.

There's just one more short chapter left to go.

Thank you for reading my cuddly Leon/Ada ramblings.


	18. Epilogue: Alive and Kicking

Good things come to those who wait and wait and wait for Ada Adore to finish her story. To those still out there reading this, I thank you.

Also, there's a pretty big time jump near the end of the chapter but I've marked where it begins.

**Epilogue: Alive and Kicking**

"_A true friend knows your weaknesses but shows you your strengths; feels your fears but fortifies your faith."_

--William Arthur Ward

**New York, Two months later**

She must have heard this song a dozen times by now. Johnny Cash. Ring of Fire. Every four minutes for the past hour she'd hear the clunk of coins into the jukebox and the punching of buttons. The patron at the opposite end of the bar had an unofficial monopoly over the machine. She knew the numbers he'd select even before his chubby fingers trampled over the keys. They were as good as an intro of plucking guitar strings and a soft drum roll.

_364. Cash, Johnny. 42. Ring of Fire. _

Somehow the flavour of that song was seeping into the walls and peeling off the paper. It slithered into every booth and swelled the leather cushioned seats with its hot breath. It sighed out into the real world every time the door swung open. It was the current under a rowboat, pitching the bar this way and that until it was spinning like a disc on a turntable; a cocktail for motion sickness. But Ada had the medicine.

A half finger of malt liquor sparkled at the bottom of her glass. The side of the tumbler had a handprint that didn't belong to her and the alcohol tasted like a burnt match. It filled her eyes with smoke and made her lips feel like crumbling ash. Ada rolled the glass between her finger and thumb. It blurred into two glinting rings for a moment, before fusing back into one. She exhaled through her nose, a groan of disappointment, and snatched it up level to her reddened nose. She toasted a half empty room.

'And it burns, it burns...' she hummed to herself in time with the song

She tipped back her eyes and the glass together, swirling the drink to the back of her mouth where it treated her tonsils like a punching bag.

Her posture was slack like ragdoll left out in the rain, but she wasn't drunk. Not properly drunk. She was _nicely drunk_, which was barely anything. It just took the edge off sitting in a crappy establishment where the kitchens released a more revolting smell than the restrooms. No. Properly drunk was an art. Choosing the right beverage took practice. It needed to infuse with your blood, but not turn your stomach. And timing. Timing was everything. It could take days to become properly inebriated. Or even years.

She didn't have years. Unfortunately. She had...

Ada blinked her watch.

She had two and a half hours. Two and a half hours to beat raw and bloody until she had to leave to catch her charter plane back to Washington.

Crooking her finger in the direction of the bar she ordered more of the same. Malt whisky. No ice. In a complimentary dirty glass. She laughed into her hand and slumped back against the chair.

She'd found this place off a main boulevard in New York City. It was tucked into a corner between an adult bookstore and an Indian restaurant. Huddled into their dark spot, they fed themselves on the same type of customer: men in their mid-forties with nothing better to do on a Wednesday at four in the afternoon than thumb through 'Betty Does Brooklyn' and wash down a chicken curry with their close friends 'Jack' and 'José.

The atmosphere hadn't shifted an inch from the moment she'd glided through the revolving doors (surely a hazard for any outgoing drunk) and perched in the empty booth furthest from the windows. She'd been relieved because anonymity was protection. Nevertheless, it stung that she could melt soundlessly into a place like this. She was too proud of turning heads to not notice when it didn't happen anymore.

Her drink arrived and out of the corner of her eye she watched the pair of legs that had delivered it walk away. They returned to the counter to continue wiping fragments of peanuts and shattered glass from one side of the bar top to the other. Ada waited for the cool liquor to warm to room temperature and for the last of the fizz to make its way to the surface. As time skated backwards around the room and pirouetted past her in clumsy loops, she thought about her day; the day she'd spent with Leon.

'_Sorry I haven't been to visit you. I don't have any good excuses. It's not as if I'm living on the other side of the country anymore. The least I could have done is check that you were still in one piece,' Leon had sat cross-legged on a cushion of the overgrown grass and fallen leaves, 'But I've been avoiding a lot of people recently. I want to make up for that.'_

_She had watched silently as he'd placed a package beside his lap._

_He'd sniffed and rubbed his nose with his sleeve to compose himself. His black denim jacket had been too thin for the shrill October winds of New York but he was too well disciplined to be bothered by the cold._

'_This is a nice place. It's open but peaceful. Maybe a little too peaceful for you,' he'd mumbled his thoughts out loud, 'I'd never thought about it until now, but I think you'd have preferred something by the water or closer to the park. We both like to be where the action is. But at least you've got good company. I think I spotted an ex-New York Yankee on the way up here.'_

_His laugh had been short but it'd warmed her up inside to hear it. She'd been worried about him since the incident at Langley. _

Lately she'd had a lot of time on her hands; enough to read every article she could find on the death of Agent Drew Mitchell. It'd been over a month since he'd killed himself. The man's death had been reported as a sudden heart attack in his obituary and bizarrely he'd been buried with full honours. Agent Rick Harris had even spoken at the man's funeral; his speech had bubbled over with praise for a man he must have had nothing but contempt for. She wasn't a gambler, at least not when it came to her money, but Ada would happily bet that Mitchell had also been awarded an entry in the book of fallen agents at the headquarters of the CIA. His name would be only a few places below those of the men and women he'd help to kill.

_Why let morality and decency get in the way of a good cover up?_

A cynical smile had followed that thought and she became curious about the motives of Rick Harris. The senior agent had begun to lay the foundations for a new government department dedicated to 'the specialist prevention of sophisticated bio-hazardous outbreaks and the clandestine surveillance of terrorists developing chemical high-powered weapons.' These were pretty fancy words that could be summarised more simply as 'kill Albert Wesker.'

Ada had caught a glimpse of the new department's 'confidential' dossier and mission statement on Wesker's computer three days ago. Two weeks in and Harris's group had already sprung a leak. Either that or Harris had freely let the information find its way to Wesker, hoping perhaps that it would intimidate him. Rather than waste resources hunting out and stopping the flow of secrets from the government to Umbrella, he was poisoning the supply, feeding Wesker lies in an attempt to disorientate him. It was a risky strategy, but a clever one if Harris had the stomach to go the distance.

Ada knew far too little about Harris and that brought her a delicious discomfort. A few new players would shake up this chessboard. It nurtured a fragile hope that her piece would not be the next to be crushed.

_Earlier that day Leon had rubbed his bare hands together and hunched forward with sudden eagerness._

'_That reminds me, I bought you something,' he'd announced, his tone so light that his words were carried off by the wind, 'I hope you like it. Just promise you won't make fun of me for this.'_

_The bag beside him had rustled as he'd shoved his hand inside and pulled out a brightly coloured baseball cap with the blue Dallas Cowboy's motif embroidered along the front. Ada's fine black eyebrows had arched upwards as he'd placed it reverently beside a terracotta pot of dying flowers. She thought she saw him smirking at a private joke._

'_Somehow I didn't think flowers would be your kind of thing,' he'd dusted the face of the pale granite headstone with his fingertips, 'You were right by the way. Superbowl 12, 1978. Dallas beat the Broncos 27 to 10. And if you can actually hear me right now I bet you just said "I told you so".'_

_A brief blink of sunlight had illuminated the words on the tombstone: 'Nathan Alexander Kennedy- Husband. Father. Friend'._

Ada tilted her head and her lips twitched into a smile so tender that is was gone before she realised it'd been there. Leon wouldn't have noticed her even if she'd been standing right beside him. Ada had never seen him so preoccupied before. Under orders, she'd followed him as he'd travelled from Washington to New York. Today, for a careful distance, she'd watched him drive around the cemetery in circles for ten minutes before he'd finally parked. Sometimes no farther away than a few feet, she'd tracked him without his knowledge.

There were acres of public space, gardens and children's parks around the graveyard. It'd been the early hours of the morning and the clouds had been pregnant with a growing storm. Leon had strolled slowly along the paths for almost an hour, lost in his own head. When she'd stumbled upon him in a secluded spot and read the name etched in cheap stone it had begun to make a little more sense.

Leon had been visiting his father's grave. Ada knew all about the dead man's past: his less than glittering military career, his injuries and his ties with disorganised but brutal gangsters in the Bronx during the eighties. Comparing his record with his son's was like comparing night and day. The apple had certainly fallen very, very far from the tree. She wondered whether Leon knew the truth about his father's ignoble death. Unlikely, she thought with a sniff. If he did, why would he have been here today?

Unless he was more forgiving than she realised.

After sending her report to Wesker's team she was told to break her surveillance on Leon and let the tracking device in his rental car do the work for them. Alone and without further orders, she'd wandered deeper into the grey heart of the city. When her legs couldn't carry her anymore she'd found her way into this bar. She hadn't bothered to read the name on the sign out front.

Ada leant her head back and the lattice woodwork design that flanked either side of her booth shrouded her face in shadows and polka dots of light. Through the tiny holes she could spy the light from the setting sun crawling through the window. It illuminated the dust that speckled the table. As another handful of quarters called up the ghost of Johnny Cash, Ada pressed her fingers through the layer of grime. She painted her name in the dirt.

'Not much in the way of entertainment is there?' a disembodied voice declared in a tone that was almost endearing with its enthusiasm. It sounded luminous to her ears as if sound could be painted garish shades of orange and gold, 'Not unless you're a fan of flies and dead country singers.'

Her eyes rose and connected with the round pupils of a man who took great pleasure in his own sense of humour. She took a silent inventory of his hopeful expression and harmlessly normal features. His jeans were a size too small but he had expensive boots. The man had a buzz cut too uneven to be a military hairstyle. His shoulders were as broad as the side of a bus and his fingers twitched nervously in a way that was somehow familiar to her.

Without being asked he slid into her booth. His body was so big and thickly muscled that he had to shift along a few times to fit. Her expression darkened with irritation and when he noticed he smiled, flashing a silver filling.

'Mind if I sit?' he asked, spreading his arms across the back of the chair and making himself comfortable.

'Are you telling me those stumpy legs couldn't carry you to an empty booth?'

The insult went over his head.

'View's better over here, Sweetheart. Much better,' he paused to leer at her as if their banter was part of an awkward mating ritual.

She rolled her eyes with disgust.

'Chin chin,' he winked and drank the remnants of his beer. The way he plugged the bottle between his yellowing teeth reminded her of a baby with a pacifier.

He gasped with satisfaction and swallowed a deep belch and it imploded at the base of his throat.

'That'll put hairs on your chest,' he nodded at her whisky.

'Your warning is noted.'

'Well I'm glad Miss..?'

She briefly considered letting him hang there waiting until he got bored of her iciness and went off to thaw himself out at another table. This is why her answer, when it came, shocked her.

'Cassidy,' she told him, the tip of her tongue burning on the name, 'My name is Cassidy.'

_Liar, lair. Skirt on fire._

A curious smile tickled her lips and the man in front of her took that as an olive branch.

'Charles. _Charlie_ O'Brian,' he tipped the brim of an invisible Stetson at her.

She continued to stare at him blankly, but he was too busy being buoyed by his supposed success with her. His eyes lapped up her low cut blouse and swept back hair. It was almost cute in a pathetic kind of way. And yet she appreciated the company on some deeper, darker level.

Her life had been at an impasse since she'd terminated her deal with The Organisation. She'd been valuable to them for a time, but they'd kept a strict distance from her even when she'd been at the centre of their operations. She could almost convince herself that they didn't really exist outside of her imagination; that's how intangible they were. Any strategic information she did have, such as the location of a handful of their safe houses, could be erased within hours of them realising that she'd been captured. And she'd given them Las Plagas, so any debt of honour had been repaid.

Wesker had swept her back to square one. Six years of work gone and it was impossible to ignore the possibility that she'd exhausted all of her options this time. Even if she escaped again The Organisation would deny any knowledge of her existence. Wesker had her tethered to the country like an animal on a leash. But she sensed that he was keeping her alive for something special. Should she stick around and wait? Or should she call his bluff and take her chances on the road alone? She'd clocked up a dozen sleepless nights, but she couldn't come to a decision. With every day that passed she felt weaker and weaker as if she'd wake up one day and find that she didn't exist anymore.

That was why existing in the eyes of a lascivious bum affirmed her slight grip on reality. He was making her feel like someone other than herself.

Ada tipped forward, making sure to get just a little closer than was polite, 'Can I buy you a drink, Charles...Charlie?'

He pretended to think it over but his twitching lips answered for him. She called over one of the ambling waitresses and ordered a couple of shot glasses and a bottle of gin.

'Mother's ruin?' O'Brian asked as the waitress's tray reappeared at their table, 'Why'd you pick that?'

Lining the glasses out in a painstaking row between them she hesitated. She wasn't sure why she'd picked gin. She hated the taste, the texture, the smell...

'Because I love gin,' she replied with bright and bubbly dishonesty that lifted her spirits like a drug, 'But I love games even more. Do you like games Charlie?'

'Uh...Sure.'

She snapped the lid off the bottle and filled each glass in turn. Her words were slurred but she didn't spill a drop.

O'Brian was growing uneasy. She could see the whites of his eyes. His wheels had already been greased by at least three or four pints. The ripeness of his breath told her that. Nevertheless he was proud; a wannabe alpha male. He didn't want to play her game, but he couldn't throw up his hands and leave. Her sultry smile and heavy eyes wouldn't let him.

'What...what do I win Sweetheart?' he grabbed the first shot glass a little too eagerly.

She sucked down her shot in one go, moaning slightly as if it was a fine oyster, 'Me,' she answered breathlessly and gave an acrid laughed, 'You get me.'

_Me. Me. Me. I want to be wanted._

O'Brian threw back his shot. His movements were jerky and unpractised so the gin rebounded hard against his throat and lungs like a rubber ball. Ada laughed again, louder this time. She was laughing _at_ him; laughing as he choked. It sounded so ugly to her ears. She slid the next glass into his open paw. He hesitated so she tossed back her hair and bared her neck invitingly. His eyeballs swam in their sockets. He drank his second. Then his third. She refilled slowly and deliberately hoping that the next drink would make her feel less ashamed.

As they both burned from the inside out, O'Brian talked about himself. He was a home appliances salesman in town on business. He had a room at the Fairview Inn and a Chevy convertible, paid for by his company's generous expenses of course. He'd let her take a test drive when she sobered up in the morning. The owners of the restaurant next door knew him by name. They gave him free flat breads because he tipped well over ten percent. He'd never dated an Asian chick before. Black, White, Hispanic, but not Asian. He called her 'Sweetheart' and 'Hot stuff' and told her how pretty she was. Ada felt that he thought she'd be impressed by him. Needless to say, she'd never been so unimpressed by a man in all her life. But she _would_ drink with him. Part of her wanted to drink with him so badly.

Suddenly her phone began to ring. It buzzed against her hip and she dug into the pocket of her jeans. She knew the number. It was one of Wesker's men. So she flicked the phone open and closed in two easy movements. The ringing stopped.

'Who was that?' O'Brian enquired in a thick voice, 'Boyfriend?'

'My father,' she lied fluently, 'I'm breaking my curfew.'

He giggled into his next shot of gin. Ada, on the other hand, fell silent again.

There was a crescent-shaped scar behind her shoulder. It looked like a bullet wound but it was actually a miniature transmitter. It allowed Umbrella to keep track of her exact position to within half a mile. Wesker had had it installed two days after Ada's visit to Leon's apartment. Any attempt to remove it would release a canister of poison under her skin that would kill her within an hour.

'_Is this necessary?' she'd demanded as two orderlies had thrust her roughly onto a hospital bed and used scissors to cut open the back of her dress._

_Ignoring her, the doctor, an older woman with skin puckered like a walnut shell, had reached for a cotton pad. She'd dipped it into a bowl of pink anti-sceptic. It had smelt sickly sweet like fresh marshmallows. After dabbing Ada's skin she'd curled her fingers around a glinting scalpel, her index finger resting expertly on the top. Ada's stomach had lurched violently and she'd inhaled the faint scent of iodine from her pillow hoping that it would distract her from the urge to be ill._

'_Well, I suppose I'd do the same thing if our roles were reversed,' Ada had grasped the pillow tightly with both hands, 'No hard feelings.'_

_She'd taken a deep breath and braced herself for the first incision._

Why was Wesker keeping her alive? She had no solid theories. After interrogating her about the details of her deal with The Organisation, he'd barred her from every major active mission within his team and assigned her to a dozen menial tasks. He stopped just short of having her sharpen pencils. Death by a thousand paper-cuts, she called it. At the same time she was under surveillance wherever she went. It was as if she was occupying a transitional phase between being a civilian and a professional mercenary. She had the restrictions of both, but the benefits of neither.

He'd moved her from the exclusive hotel and into an underground facility a few miles outside Washington. She wasn't permitted to leave the building without prior authorisation and any request would take weeks to process. Her room was small and windowless with stark, white walls and naked light bulbs on an automated timer. She spent most of her days without natural sunlight, so those bulbs had complete control of her days and nights, how she slept and how she woke. Some days they wouldn't turn on at all and she'd be left in utter darkness for hours. A 'malfunction in the main computer system' her wardens told her, leaving her with the faint impression that she was being paranoid.

But in the darkness depression and fear began to breed.

'Your turn! Bottoms up Babe,' O'Brian hooted as she fumbled for her glass.

Her wrists felt limp all of a sudden and she fatigue began building against her like a river bulging behind a dam. She couldn't lift the glass higher than an inch off the table. She dropped it and rubbed the back of her hand against her forehead. It felt wet and cold, her sweat thick like slime.

'Hey, you're not gonna be sick are ya Sweetheart?' O'Brian chuckled, 'Guess girls like you can't hold your liquor. You wanna hit the road? We can get a cab. I'll pay.'

Ada crossed her fingers over her eyes as nausea bubbled up her throat.

'Hey,' O'Brian swung his arm forward and grabbed her wrist, 'Hey! Hello!'

She snatched her hand away, 'Don't touch me,' she spat.

'Whoa,' he made another attempt to grab her but it was ill-timed and her nails nicked his forearm, 'What the fuck is your problem? Bad loser?'

'Leave. Now.'

'What?'

'You're deaf as well as stupid? I said get lost!' she glared not caring that their voices were drowning out Johnny Cash and drawing lazy looks from the meagre clientele.

'Listen Bitch,' O'Brian's square jaw trembled and his hands curled into hammer-like fists, 'There's no need to get hysterical.'

'Hysterical?' she echoed, making fun of his grand tone, 'Big word for such a little man.'

His face started to grow red from his nose and outwards towards his temple, 'Your people don't have any manners do they? Somebody ought to teach you some. I thought we had a deal.'

'You're complaining because I won't let you fuck me over half a bottle of gin?' she smiled sarcastically.

Her voice had carried to both ends of the bar and a few customers were snickering into their glasses. O'Brian heard them and flew to his feet.

'You little whore!'

'Well I suppose I am,' Ada folded her hands under her chin and gazed up at him with eyes wide like spotlights, 'Do you know why men like you love whores? Because you're selfish and you're insecure. It's obvious that you hate women. And it's not because your mother didn't love you or because women don't pay attention to you. It's that the attention is never enough, is it? You want to feel powerful and the only way you know how to do that is to steal power from people you think are weaker than you. So you boast and you exaggerate. You bully the women you're with until they start to believe that they aren't worth anything more than a fumble in the backseat of a tatty vintage car with a slob like you.'

O'Brian sneered down at her and his wide shoulders hunched up to his ears. For a second she hoped he'd take a swing at her. Even in her condition she was confident that she could hurl him headfirst through the table. Besides, she still had her gun and taking someone down would give her that visceral thrill she was craving. But O'Brian had a shred more decency than she'd anticipated. With a final curse aimed at her, he turned and stormed for the exit. The revolving door rattled behind him.

The bar fell back to its earlier rhythm so quickly that it was jarring. Johnny Cash was no longer whispering about fire and eternal damnation from across the room. Now he was hollering it into her ears.

She rubbed both hands over her face and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply and a sob escaped from her mouth.

Then she heard footsteps bearing down on her table. Steeling herself, she expected to hear the bartender's nasal New Yorker accent asking her to pay up and leave. His establishment was obviously too good for the likes of her.

'Fine. I'm going,' she mumbled, reaching blindly for the leather jacket she'd left on the seat beside her.

'Sure you can make it to the door?'

Ada's hand stilled and it curled into the fur lining of the coat. A cold sweat tickled the back of her neck. She kept her head down but her ear was inclined to his sound: his voice, his breathing, his pulse. She squeezed her eyes shut, locking back angry, shameful tears.

'Is there something I can do for you Agent Kennedy?' she muttered, her voice fractured and bleeding.

Leon stared at her with an uncertainty that reminded her of how far she'd fallen after returning from Spain.

'You can tell me what just happened,' he said as he eased himself into the still warm seat across from her.

She wanted to react angrily, but she was burnt out to the stub.

'If you need a recap, please ask anyone here,' she gazed across the room and saw the bartender discretely stashing away his case of marijuana. He must have heard her call Leon by his rank and assumed that he was scouting for a sting operation.

She smirked lazily and finished off the shot of gin she'd hesitated over earlier. Her vision swam and she enjoyed the sight of two Leon Scott Kennedys; two pairs of concerned eyes, two pairs of lips drawn into a straight line, two faces staring at her as if she were a stranger.

Her heart felt like it had been struck by an arrow.

This was the closest she'd been to him since that night at his apartment. The skin on her lips tingled at the memory. The kiss she'd given him on a whim had been memorable; especially because right after she'd left a sample of her lipstick on his cheek he'd let out a gravelly moan and mumbled something that'd sounded like: 'Mmm. You still taste like frosting.'

Whatever he'd been dreaming about, it had to have been interesting.

He was still wearing the dark denim jacket and scuffed biker boots that he'd worn to his father's grave.

Leon shifted forward and lowered his voice. He placed his arms across the table and knotted his fingers together calmly like a school principle with a wayward child, 'There's only one person I want to hear from right now.'

'Unlike Mr Cash I don't give encores,' she glanced away, 'Sorry.'

She tried to sound biting and cruel but that final word split down the middle. Her throat quivered. She buried her face in the crook of her elbow and coughed.

'You need some water?'

She shook her head feverishly and wiped her nose on her sleeve.

'Come on, out with it,' she inhaled and sat up straight, 'How long have you been spying on me?'

He leaned back and his hands dropped onto his lap, 'Since you left me at the cemetery.'

She went pale. He'd seen everything. He'd _heard_ everything.

'I don't believe you.'

A small, sad smile tickled the corner of his mouth, 'When you came in you ordered a martini first but the bartender had run out of olives. You told him that the olive was the best part of the drink. So you switched to whisky, straight up and-'

'All right,' she interrupted him, 'I believe you.'

Either he was getting better at blending in or she was getting worse.

'What about you?' he asked hesitantly, 'I didn't catch wind of you until I was on the highway out of the cemetery. How much did you see?'

She knew he was referring to his animated conversation with his father's tombstone.

Ada's shoulder's relaxed an inch and she tilted her head cheekily, 'I saw enough to realise that you know nothing about sports. Everybody knows that the Dallas Cowboys won in 1978.'

He smirked and the tension melted from his eyes. Ada began mentally comparing him to the way he'd looked two months ago. He'd had his hair trimmed. Her fingers twitched, longing to touch the soft strands. He'd let his stubble grow for a few days and its cover was surprisingly even. She'd never wondered what he'd look like with a beard before. The sensation of kissing his cheek would be different now.

She shook her head and lowered her eyes. His smile, bright enough to frighten away storm clouds, was affecting her and she couldn't just blame the alcohol.

'I hear you've been transferred from the Secret Service and into a new anti-terrorism squad,' she cut in quickly to keep her wandering mind in check, 'Is it true?'

'You know it is,' he flashed a wicked smile; one that she found the strength to return.

A migraine began to tap-dance along her forehead. She flicked her gaze away from the streams of searing light pouring in from the window.

'I should thank you,' his smile softened, relaxing naturally into his handsome features.

'I...What?' she frowned.

'I should thank you,' he grew serious again, 'I wouldn't have found out about Mitchell without your help. Your research...it was brilliant. Taught me a thing or two, actually.'

Heat rose up from underneath her collar at his compliment. She remembered what it was like to feel proud of her work and she was angry that after only two months she'd lost that part of herself.

'Mitchell was your friend. You must have been disappointed.'

Leon shrugged casually, but she caught the look of sadness that passed over his eyes, 'Understatement. How long had you known about him?'

'A year.'

His back straightened and she braced herself for the cynical, bitter reply that never came.

'You could have told me outright.'

'Would you have believed me?' she challenged him smilingly.

'Maybe. Maybe not. But it doesn't explain why you helped me to-' he halted mid-sentence and narrowed his eyes at her but not in an unfriendly way, 'You turned in a man who was helping your organisation. You've crippled and blinded your employer. It's a display of self-mutilation that'd make Van Gogh proud.'

'Ah,' she reached over and wrapped her hands around the gin bottle. It was still cool to the touch and she longed to press it to her forehead just to watch the glass melt, 'Interesting analogy.'

She filled the shot glass to the top this time and turned to Leon with a sly look, 'You're not going to make me drink alone?'

As she tried to fill another glass, he grabbed the bottle and plucked it easily from her slack fingers.

'How are you?' he asked as he subtly placed the bottle out of her reach.

He was being very even with her; strong and caged every time he spoke. She was proud of him. It took what little self control she had left not to laugh and applaud him.

'I'm alive,' she answered.

'Is that all you can say?'

'It's all that matters,' she peered up at him, 'Isn't it?'

'Not always.'

Ada scoffed and leaned back, her arms folded. His 'holier than thou' tone was beginning to grate on her, 'Please. You're not my mother, Leon. If you were you'd be mixing me my next cocktail and lighting me a cigarette.'

'Never pictured you for a drinker,' he eyed the smudged shot glasses distastefully, 'Especially at four in the afternoon.'

'Well I only started an hour ago so it's a little early for the intervention.'

Like flicking a switch, Leon's expression dropped all pretence of calm and he fixed her with a fierce look of disappointment. She flinched as if he'd slapped her.

'That's not true from where I am,' he muttered darkly, 'Christ, Ada. Look at yourself. You're doing a damn good impression of death warmed up. And I don't know what you thought you were doing with that jerk. You're lucky he didn't cause trouble.'

'Oh keep your charity to yourself for a change,' she waved her hand a little too wildly and knocked one of the shot glasses onto its side. It clinked and rolled in an arc across the table, 'I don't need your help.'

It was his turn to roll his eyes, 'Right now I wouldn't trust you to tie your shoes on your own.'

'Anyone ever told you that you're one ungrateful son of bitch?' she replied with a dangerous half-smile that made her eyes glint like the rim of a whisky glass, 'What makes you think you know what's best for me?'

His eyes were icier than she'd ever seen them, 'I don't. But this isn't who you are and you know I'm right. Part of you _has_ to know,' he hesitated, his gaze lingering on her face. He was trying to burrow through the dull sheen that covered her eyes these days, 'I'm not walking away, Ada. You can push me all you want because I swear to God I'll push you right back.'

With his feet planted firmly on the floor, she knew he wasn't leaving her. Her cheeks burned. She envied his strength and his passion. More than that, her heart began to race just for him.

'What happened to you?' he looked stricken. Even in Raccoon City she'd never seen him look so wounded.

Her eyes widened at how easy he found it to swing her from screams of frustration to a state of stunned silence. But as her hands began to shake she realised that she didn't want him to stay.

After the two months she'd had, from her dream of a beautiful life to weeks of degrading torture, there was one conclusion she'd come to. Her feelings for Leon weren't what they'd been six years ago.

Today they were so much stronger. Tomorrow, as always, they'd be deeper. And he must never know.

Before Spain it had been so easy to think of Leon as an object of desire. She'd played with her memory of him like a pet, preening and admiring it, keeping it safe. Then, for a day, she'd had Leon as a husband. She'd watched him struggle and doubt himself. She'd seen him love so unconditionally. And what's more, she'd seen the kind of woman she could be by his side.

But after the catastrophe in Madrid it became obvious that he deserved so much more than her devotion. She could barely take care of herself anymore, let alone take care of him too. He was right. She was less than she'd been a few short months ago and it tore her in two.

Lately she'd begun to feel like a virus; a creature without a purpose beyond survival. She was rushing headlong to her own death and taking down anyone she infected. It wasn't her intention. It was just the way she'd been made.

'Say whatever you want,' Ada replied cruelly and threw herself up and out of her seat, 'You try to stop me and I swear I'll shoot you. Maybe I should have gone through with it the first time. Think of the trouble it would have saved me!'

With those words she finally shattered. She'd swung for him and struck herself instead. Leon had the grace not to react but she felt disgusted with what she'd said to him.

She barely had time to grab her coat before the first hot tear began to paint a ribbon down her cheek. The floor was like quicksand. Each time she put her foot down it was harder to lift it again. She was sinking.

'Fine,' Leon rose out of his seat. Even with a height difference of just three inches he seemed to tower over her. His pulse slammed against his collarbone, 'Try me. Let's see who's the fastest draw.'

Ada parted her lips to hit him with the brunt of her anger and punish him for seeing through her. She dared to blame him for distracting her in Spain, to tell him how badly she'd screwed up six years of work and to tell him...to tell him that she wanted help, but she didn't know how _not_ to be alone. Still nothing came out. She stood silently staring into his face.

And for a second there he was: her husband. Someone so tuned into her needs that he sometimes knew what she needed before she did. It hurt to see him this way as much as it pleased her. He was so distant now, more out of reach than ever. Like an ember from the fire he burned a hole inside her and vanished. She felt that the distance was her fault; not Wesker's or The Organisation's. She'd been the one who'd accelerated ahead without him. She'd forced them apart and now it was too late.

She sank back into her seat and, without reservation, she broke down in tears. The alcohol was flooding her system. Her veins swam in it. It blinded her to the attention she was getting and it finally drowned out Johnny Cash's drawl. Her frailty glittered in the moisture that stung her eyelids. She could see grotesque reflections of herself in them even when she closed her eyes.

Then warmth spread between her shoulders and across her back. It hung around her shoulders like a strong pair of arms. Her hand flew up to her neck and she grabbed a fistful of denim. Her spine snapped tight like a guitar string.

'Leon?' she mouthed his name before her eyes came into focus.

For a few, drawn out seconds he was just a white and blue blur sat beside her; a blur that was draping her body with his jacket.

His breath condensed on her forehead as it escaped his mouth. He was breathing uneasily. He seemed mortified by her tears. If she could have, she would have made fun of him. Ada pressed her hand flat against his chest, silently begging him to calm down and to finally stop worrying about her. But deep down she felt a shy, tendril of joy creeping into her heart. He tightened his jacket around her body and she slid between his open arms. She tucked her fingers tightly into her palms and buried her face against his neck. Leon rolled his cheek over her forehead. His stubble didn't feel coarse against her skin. It was soft and even; a purely tactile experience that made her toes curl.

His pulse pounded against her cheek but he didn't say a word. She felt the need to say something to him but when she lifted her head from his shoulder she began to dry heave. Half a dozen shots gurgled their way up her neck.

Leon swore under his breath. He dragged her roughly out of her seat and frog-marched her to the lavatory. Without his help she would have cracked both knees on the tiles as she dove for an empty toilet stall. Ada's stomach turned itself inside out and emptied her afternoon out in reverse.

Four shots of gin. Two and a half whiskies. A mouthful of rum and coke. Seven salted peanuts.

It smelt stale and toxic. Her shoulders trembled violently as she retched. Ada squeezed her eyes shut. It felt like hours before her body calmed down. Only then did she notice that Leon was holding her hair away from her face. His kindness touched her most when she realised how little she deserved it.

'This isn't how I imagined my day this morning,' he murmured distantly, stroking her back.

She slouched sleepily against the cracked, plastic toilet seat.

'It could have been worse,' she slurred, 'Fortunately I haven't eaten in a couple of days.'

He smiled weakly, 'Lucky me.'

The toilet bowl amplified her sickly moan. She felt ravaged, as if the hand of God had ripped out her insides and made her eat them.

'You done yet?' Leon peeked past her shoulder with morbid interest.

She scowled at how jaded he sounded, 'No. Can't you tell? I'm enjoying myself.'

He released her hair and tipped back on his heels, 'Is there any other reason, apart from the alcohol, to explain why you've been such an unbearable bitch tonight?'

Leon flashed her split-second grin that was more than teasing but less than cruel. Still it walked a fine line finding just enough pointed sarcasm to make her squirm like butterfly in a spider's web.

Ada curled her tongue and tasted the telltale sour fuzz around her teeth. She turned her head away. It was hard enough to look him in the eye before today. Now she'd humiliated herself and humiliated him. Her work was done. The ground could swallow her up now.

'What was your father like?' she whispered.

Her request echoed around the stall. He stared at her, the corner of his mouth twitching sceptically.

'Please,' she blinked the weariness from her eyes and willed him to play along. She desperately wanted to shift the subject far away from her, 'Tell me about him.'

He didn't say anything at first and she was worried he might refuse to. But finally he sighed and reached up to rip the last strip of tissue from the dispenser above her head. He pressed the wad of paper to the corner of her mouth and helped her freshen up.

'He was in the army,' he began.

'Naturally,' she mumbled.

He slowly pulled her away from the cistern and tugged on the flush, 'He died when I was five. But I suppose you already know that.'

She didn't answer. The calloused pads of Leon's fingers brushed her chin as he straightened out her skewed collar.

'I remember him being good to me even when I was a pain in the ass,' he continued cautiously, treating his memories like fragile treasures he didn't want to handle too often, 'He taught me how to do handstands and how to be a good big brother. No matter what he always had good intentions.'

As she listened, she began to wonder exactly how much of the truth he knew about his father.

'There are roads that are paved with good intentions and they all lead to the same place,' she muttered cynically, 'Do you still...do you admire him?'

'Sometimes. He used to...' he swallowed hard and glanced away, 'He used to drink a lot. I only just found out. When things got hard and he thought he'd failed everyone he turned to alcohol.'

Ada chewed her bottom lip, guilty for bringing the subject up and only too aware that her behaviour must have reminded him of more painful times, 'Is that so? Who told you that?'

He smirked ruefully, '_He_ did.'

Her brow knotted in confusion.

'Long story,' he told her, rising to his knees. The damp floor left patches on his jeans, 'What I _can_ say is that until I found out about everything he'd done I never really knew my dad. I just knew him in pieces. I saw the cliff-notes version of him that everyone else thought was better for me. If I could go back to how it was before I wouldn't do it.'

'Why?' she pressed before she could stop herself, 'Why keep ploughing through when you could start fresh?'

'How would we ever learn to forgive?' he combed his fingers through his hair and rested his head against the partition wall that separated the cubicle. Ada noticed for the first time how exhausted he looked, 'My mom hardly talks about him. I used to resent her for that. But when I was at his grave I saw flowers...a special breed of lily that could only have come from her. She grows them in her greenhouse on the West coast. They're her pride and joy. I think part of her forgave him despite everything. To be honest I think I badly underestimated her.'

'And what about you? Do you forgive him?'

There was a fine veil of doubt over his words, 'Not yet. But I will.'

Before she could ask another question Leon backed out of the stall. Rubbing the back of his neck, he scanned the room as he tried to orientate himself. He exhaled gruffly and told her to wait. She sat with her knees tucked into her chest. She drifted, ignoring the seconds that passed. When Leon returned, he pulled her to her feet.

'I have to go,' he said softly into her ear, 'I have a meeting before I head west. I'm visiting relatives,' he paused as though wondering why he told her that, 'But I've left you cab fare and I handled your tab.'

'I have money,' she mumbled as he led her back to her seat under the scornful gaze of half a dozen bleary eyes.

She'd never been a good patient. She hated being shuttled around and treated like a baby. Whether it was the drink or emotional stress, she was abnormally aware of her own disgrace. As desperately as she wanted to be left alone, her fingernails were sinking possessively into his shirt sleeve.

'I'll be fine,' she breathed as he lowered her into her chair.

'Are you sure?'

She looked down and noticed a mug of hot coffee had been left on her table. He must have ordered it for her.

Ada closed her eyes and focused all her energy into letting him go and keeping him gone, 'Is this the part where you take my hand and tell me that everything is going to be okay?'

He took her cynicism on the chin and shrugged his jacket back onto his shoulders, 'No. I think you're in deep shit. Why else would you have downed enough gin to knock out a rhino?'

'If it bothered you so much you had plenty of time to stop me.'

'I know,' he replied wearily, 'But you're right. I'm not your mother.'

Leon slid his hand into his pocket and produced a folded piece of white paper that looked like it had been torn from one of the disposable tablecloths in the bar.

'But I _am _your friend,' he dropped it beside the coffee cup, 'Even if you're only half the woman I think you are you'll open it.'

He didn't stay a moment longer. When he passed through the revolving door she imagined him diving into the fresh air with relief.

Ada took the letter he'd left. The thin, ivory sheet fluttered in her unsteady hand. The thought of what he'd written as he'd watched her degrade herself made her feel like running for the bathroom again. But that wasn't why she ripped the letter into two pieces and threw it into the ashtray. It was because she wanted to believe that nothing had changed in the past hour. She wanted to believe that she could still go it alone.

Nevertheless, she felt the two strips of paper staring at her like the twin barrels of a smoking gun.

'There anything else you want?' a nearby waitress spoke past the wad of chewing gum wedged between her teeth.

'Yes,' Ada straightened her blouse and slid her arms into her coat. She kept her eyes nailed to the waitress's thickly painted lashes and played the part of a sober woman.

_It'd be nice to get out of here with at least a molecule of dignity._

'Could you get me some sugar for this coffee?'

'There's like three lumps in there already,' the corners of the waitress's lips turned down and she looked nauseated, 'But if it's what you want...'

'Wait...No,' she called her back, 'Don't bother. This is fine.'

She lifted the mug to her mouth and tasted. It was double strength, black, extra sweet. It swirled around her head and steamed out of her ears. She groaned and her body curled back into her seat. It was perfect. None of her past lovers or colleagues had ever been less than disturbed by her love of strong, blow-the-roof-of-your-mouth-off caffeine. It was her one, genuine vice. She couldn't guess how Leon had known about it. Ada closed her eyes and inhaled the sweet scent of wide-awake. She was bodily drained and her fever hadn't gone yet, but her limbs had stopped quivering. The edge of the coffee cup was still hot and it branded her lips, stealing away the numb sensation that had been with her since her time in Wesker's tank.

Ada sighed into the mug and the steam blew around her face, wisps of it tangling in her hair and drying the wet streaks on her face. She drained the cup slowly and a stray thought plummeted from the back of her mind to the depths of her gut.

_Gin. Mother's ruin. _

_My mother's ruin._

Her mother had loved gin.

_Oh god._

She firmly placed her empty mug down and blinked into the murky dregs of coffee in the bottom.

Her instincts earlier had been spot on. Why hadn't she listened to herself? Ada's chin dropped to her chest and she felt so completely foolish.

There had been something familiar about Charlie O'Brian when he'd sat in front of her earlier. He'd exuded ego and self-loathing like a unique pheromone.

During her childhood men like him were all she'd been exposed to: her mother's boyfriends. Her mother had chosen her men systematically. Drink, cigarettes, drugs, gambling; there always seemed to be one for each of her addictions. When Ada had been seven years old her mother had been involved with a man who worked at a dog racing track in Denver: Oliver Trask. He'd been fifty; twenty years older than her mother. He'd bought Ada gifts: plastic dolls with shiny blonde hair down to their knees and dead, unblinking eyes. None of her mother's other boyfriends had done that. Trask had taken her mother out dancing and he'd made her laugh once at a joke that Ada hadn't understood. But he'd expected much in return. Too much. And when Ada had told her mother that she'd had to fight him away when he'd come into her room one night, she'd been called a liar.

_Liar, liar. Skirt on fire._

Her mother had sung that drunkenly as she'd thrown her daughter out of the room and locked the door behind her; locked her in the dark.

They'd moved away two nights later anyway; far away from Denver and away from Oliver Trask. But Cassidy Hung, Ada's mother, had never forgiven her daughter for being the cause of their move or for being lusted after by the man she thought she loved.

Ada had used her mother's name without thinking when she'd introduced herself to O'Brian. But in remembering that woman...in _becoming_ her, she was losing herself.

The last thing she'd ever seen her mother do was drink gin alone in the dark. Now she was following that pattern.

Horrified, Ada clasped her hands together, squeezing her fingers until her knuckles shone white. Fixing her eyes on the exit she knew she had to get out of here; the sooner the better. She snatched her purse and struggled to stand. She turned around and waited for the room to stop doing back flips. Her body was a thin sapling bending in the wind. As she waited her eyes were drawn to the scraps of paper she'd discarded. A shade of regret fell over her and she slid her hand across the table. Grasping the two pieces hungrily, she stuffed them into her purse and stumbled for the exit.

Once out in the biting winds and smog, she flagged down a cab and asked to be taken to the airport. Her flight wasn't due to leave for a while, but she didn't want to sit around any longer.

She inhaled shakily and winced at how raw and punished her throat was, as if she'd been eating glass all night. As she slouched in the back seat of the cab, she recovered Leon's letter from her bag. The disjointed pieces reminded her of the two of them. Their most jagged and uneven edges were where they fit together best of all. She was still terrified of letting Leon into her life and her work, but she'd exhausted every other option. Tonight he'd found her and picked her up off the floor. But most of all he didn't appear to regret having that burden.

With short and ragged breaths Ada pressed the broken pieces of his letter together to make a whole. She blinked through the darkness and began to read.

---

**Ten years later.**

She pressed her ear down on the summit of the bump and narrowed her eyes, focusing her senses. Her hands were too small to cover the whole surface at once so she moved them in circles searching desperately for any sign of movement. She tapped her fingers impatiently (once, twice, three times) and waited to hear something...anything other than her own soft panting.

'I can't hear them,' Mei Li Kennedy complained and lifted her head. Her lips twisted as her tenuous patience began to fray at the edges, 'Why can't I hear them now?'

Ada caressed her cheek with the backs of her fingers, 'Don't worry Mei Li. They're just sleeping.'

'When do they wake up?' she shuffled along the mattress on her hands and knees.

She reached the head of the bed where her mother sat and snuggled against her. Ada held her tight, moulding her daughter's form in her arms and felt a surge of contentment. Six months ago Mei Li had turned five and she hadn't looked back. Ada's first pregnancy had been a difficult one, so Mei Li had always been a small child. But now she was beginning to catch up with her peers in terms of height and strength. The taller she grew, the more she could reach and the more her confidence skyrocketed. Leon complained that she was growing too quickly and he sometimes pined for the days when he could carry her around the house all day under one arm.

'In a couple of months you'll have those days back two fold,' Ada had comforted Leon only this morning when, with a sad smile, he'd watched Mei Li make her breakfast without his help, 'And remember, she's your little princess. You shouldn't waste energy wondering when she won't need you anymore, because that day will never come.'

In spite of her giving Leon calm reassurance about their daughter, Ada found herself wandering their quiet home in the middle of the day half expecting her little girl to come bolting out of her room begging her to play outside or taste whatever mess she and her father had made in the kitchen. Ada was sure that the only thing harder than growing up yourself was to watch your child go through those changes.

She'd tried her best to help her daughter make a smooth transition into her first school. But it hadn't been easy. Though Mei Li had been in class for months now, she still remembered what it was like to spend most of her days with her parents and she missed them fiercely. Mei Li's teacher had assured them that an only child from a tight family unit would naturally find it hard to adjust to being in a new environment. But even the smiling Miss Cole was becoming impatient with Mei's stubbornness. During the first few weeks of term she'd called their home four or five times to tell them that Mei Li wouldn't eat her lunch and was demanding to come home.

Things were improving gradually. When she actually cooperated Mei Li was recognised as an extraordinarily bright child. She was making new friends and slowly getting used to the idea of not being the only child in the household. Leon and Ada had made a special effort to involved Mei Li in the pregnancy and their daughter happily owned her role as big sister. There was a sheet of paper a meter long on the fridge door with baby names scribbled in her bold, wonky writing.

'"_Buttercup"?' Leon had pointed at the new addition to the list that morning, 'I think we're going to have to gently vito that one.'_

'_I'm sure she was just trying to think of something pretty,' Ada had replied resting her arm on his shoulder and discreetly easing the weight of the balls of her feet, 'We did promise to let her name one of them.'_

'_Sure. But relationships between siblings are hard enough as it is. I don't want to hear a screaming argument because we let her name her little brother or sister...' he'd scanned the list and laughed, '"Cuddles" or "Frodo".'_

'They usually start moving at night,' Ada turned to Mei Li with a wry smile and gently patted her protruding abdomen, 'They like to wait until I'm about to fall asleep.'

'But I can't hear them then,' Mei insisted, 'I never get to feel them. Daddy has and Aunt Joan has, but I haven't.'

'You'll hear them plenty when they're born Little One. I promise you that.'

_In three weeks and four days._

They were cutting it close. The walls of the nursery were wet and the cribs hadn't been delivered yet. Ada took a deep, calming breath and silently rushed through a ridiculous pre-natal exercise their doctor had suggested. She counted to ten and concentrated hard on the weight of her children against her body, reassuring herself that they were safe and everything else could wait. It focused her mind, smoothing out those little heart pounding ruffles that came with a huge hormonal shift and an enforced prescription of bed rest.

Then she exhaled a short laugh. What she wouldn't give for a picture of Leon's reaction when they'd been told they were expecting twins. He went from dazed to looking like he wanted to high-five himself.

Mei Li chewed her lip, a habit she'd picked up from her mother, 'Did I move around a lot? Daddy said I kicked sometimes. Did it hurt?'

'Not really,' Ada swung her legs off the mattress and, with one hand over her stomach, she eased herself up, 'In fact, you made me very happy,' she beckoned Mei Li off the bed, 'When I felt you move I knew that you were safe.'

Ada adjusted her centre of balance to compensate for holding Mei Li's hand. They negotiated the stairs side by side, Mei Li squeezing her mother's hand anxiously. Ada sighed. It was obvious she'd picked up her father's paranoia. At Ada's last check up she'd been told that the stress of a double pregnancy on a woman in her late thirties sometimes led to complications. Apparently she was a little anaemic, though Ada insisted that she felt fine.

Since Deputy Director Palmer had been forced to grant Ada a much needed sabbatical, she and Leon had leapt eagerly into expanding their small family. It'd taken them an incredible and exhausting year to conceive, but as the due date galloped towards them their minds returned again and again to the miscarriage three years ago. The outside chance that something out of the blue...something without any clear cause could hit them again was always there. It fuelled an undercurrent of fear that picked at the foundations of their fragile security. Ada kept a brave face and breezed through her daily routine of exercises. Leon buried himself in putting together Mei Li's new garden swing and taking care of the more physical household chores. But they weren't fooling anyone, least of all themselves.

'Hey,' Leon stuck his head out of the kitchen door the moment their feet hit the bottom step, 'What are you doing up? Dinner's not even started yet.'

'I'm not under house arrest,' she replied with an edgy look.

'No. You're on bed rest,' he came out into the hall wiping his wet hands on a towel, 'That means staying in the vicinity of an actual bed. And _you_,' he fixed Mei Li with a firm stare, 'Your homework isn't even finished yet. Go on Peanut. When you're done I'll let you choose our dessert.'

'Okay,' Mei Li huffed, but her eyes betrayed an excitement at her father's offer, 'But I want one with chocolate in it.'

When she returned to the kitchen Leon flung the towel up onto his shoulder. He slid closer to his wife and tucked his arm around her waist.

'Again with the chocolate,' he chuckled, 'She's picking up all your bad habits.'

She could smell the like lemon laundry detergent he'd accidently spilled over his shirt that morning.

'You smell good,' she picked at one his buttons with her finger and gazed up at him invitingly.

He tugged diffidently at his shirt, 'Saves on aftershave I guess,' he steered her towards the living room, 'Here. Take a load off your feet and my mind.'

She groaned, her shoulders tense as she fought not to throw his arm away from her waist, 'Leon, how many times do I have to say it? There's nothing wrong with me.'

His eyebrows drooped and he rubbed his forehead against his forearm, 'You know what Doctor Forzani said.'

'Yes,' Ada lowered herself into an armchair, 'But I don't remember her saying that I couldn't take care of myself. You've decided that all on your own.'

His jaw muscles jumped as he considered her words, 'That is not true. I just want to help.'

'Then please stop telling me what to do,' she looked away and smiled at the irony, 'Being force fed a diet of no stress is what irritates me in the first place.'

'You're right,' Leon groaned and his shoulders hunched, defeated, 'But I can't shake this...this fear that it could happen all over again.'

She sighed and knotted her fingers over her stomach, 'It wasn't our fault you know.'

'I know. And that's what scares me,' he knelt beside her and kissed her stomach reverently, 'We didn't just lose a baby. We almost lost you too that night. I don't think I've ever been so terrified. This is what I do when I feel like I'm losing control of the situation. Just ignore me.'

'I do that anyway,' she flicked a lock of ash blond hair from his eyes and kissed him shakily on the lips. Her smile was strained but she was genuinely touched by him, 'I won't take any risks. I promise. Besides, you've always been a pain. Don't stop now. It's almost sexy.'

He brushed his thumb against her mouth and smiled broadly in a way that made her toes curl. Climbing to his feet, he headed for the door.

Ada reclined in the chair and flexed her ankles in absent-minded arcs, 'Leon?'

'Yeah?'

'Can you get me that book?' she pointed towards the shelf, her eyes shinning expectantly.

He turned and narrowed his eyes at her, 'Thought you didn't want my help.'

'Fine. But it'll take me five minutes to get up again.'

He laughed and crossed the room to pluck Doctor Zhivago from the bookshelf. He slipped it into her hand.

Ada flipped the book's cover open as Leon strode back to the kitchen. A folded page slipped out and landed on her lap.

'Oh,' she caught it thinking that another page of the restored volume had come loose. She pinched the brittle paper and saw the tattered edges. Then she realised she was wrong.

'What?' Leon asked cautiously, turning back to her.

She didn't answer immediately. But when Leon came closer and peeped over her shoulder he recognised his faded handwriting.

'God,' he breathed, sitting on the arm of the chair beside her, 'I didn't know you still had that.'

She nodded distractedly and ran her fingers over the tape she'd used repair the torn note. It was the letter Leon had given her ten years ago at that dive bar in New York. She got a chill thinking of that time in her life and how alone she'd felt.

'I thought I'd lost it after we moved,' she said, leaning back into his embrace, 'I looked everywhere but...'

Leon hushed her gently and kissed her hair, 'I know.'

In silence they read the letter both of them knew by heart.

_Ada,_

_I'm sitting across the bar watching you. I can hear you talking and laughing, but I've never felt so far away from you. The moment I caught sight of you today I couldn't take my eyes off you. It's like you're fading away from me and there's nothing I can do to stop it. One thing's for sure- you've always known how to scare me. _

_Since I met you we've always been on the same side, but we just haven't acknowledged it. So that's what I want to do right now. I am on your side Ada, first and foremost. I won't pretend to know what you're going through or what Wesker's done to you, though I hope one day you'll feel you can trust me enough to tell me._

_I've been watching you a lot and I know that you're up to something. Are you doing what I think you're doing? God, I hope so. And if you are, then please let me help you. _

_I've already buried one friend this month. I'll be damned if I let another one go too. Nothing good can come of going it alone, not in our business. You're good Ada, but no one's __that__ good._

_Whether you'll need me in the end or not, I'm sure right now that I need you. I truly need you Ada. I'm going back to work against Umbrella and I'd be a hell of a lot safer with you by my side. We've proven a dozen times how good a team we are. Even with the dangers involved I can't imagine anything less than the two of us being there to pull the final trigger and end this one day._

_All you have to do is say that you'll let me in. It's as easy and as terrifying as that._

_And no, before you ask, I'm not promising you the world. I'm promising you my ear, my hands, my gun and my loyalty. They're yours and yours alone. _

_You know where to find me, as always._

_Leon._

'That was a day and a half, wasn't it?' Leon breathed. He touched the corner of the letter as though he wasn't sure that it'd been real.

'Mmm,' Ada nodded solemnly and folded the letter back.

Regret was too powerful an emotion to be buried under better choices. A strange sensation of longing overcame her and she wished she could have erased some of the things she'd said and done that day.

'You never did tell me why you decided to read it,' Leon drew the length of her jaw with his finger and she arched back to look at him.

'I threw it away,' she replied, averting her eyes apologetically, 'At first I didn't want to know...any of it.'

'I can see that,' he nodded with a dry smile at the clear tape keeping the letter together, 'When I wrote it I think my hands were shaking. Look. My handwriting's terrible.'

She laughed softly and closed her eyes, 'It's all right. I can read Chinese so this wasn't too challenging,' she breathed in, filling her chest and blinking away the stinging sensation around her eyes, 'I was a real bitch to you that day, you remember?'

'You weren't at your best,' he replied cautiously, 'I'm a big boy. It was nothing I couldn't handle. It stung like Hell, but I knew you were suffering. I just wanted to help you.'

'You did,' she squeezed his knee with her hand for reassurance, as if his physicality in her life was all she needed to feel truly safe rather than just surviving, 'You were...you _are_ my greatest strength. Without each other I don't think we would have made it through those next few years.'

'I second that,' his arms bundled her into a tighter hug which she indulged in shamelessly. It'd been months since he'd held her without being afraid she'd snap in two, 'I didn't know how you'd react to me being at that bar. I could've left...I almost did at one point, but I was desperate to see you. I couldn't afford to lose you again.'

'No,' she crossed her arms over his. A rogue tear melted under her eyelid but she didn't spare it a thought, 'I was always yours.'

Leon pressed his face against her and nuzzled the sweet-spot where her neck and shoulder met, dipping into a cleft at the start of her collarbone. The impact of his firm flesh spread sensations from the base of her throat to the fan of her pelvis, branching out like a thousand fingers and holding her breath hostage.

Suddenly Ada winced and her shoulders bounced against him. She puffed hard, her eyes wide as through the air had been kicked out of her lungs.

Leon's arms fell loose at her sides and he slid off the chair to face her. He crouched by her feet and she could see in his eyes that he was already mentally reciting Doctor Forzani's home phone number.

'Ada! Look at me,' he pleaded.

'Please. Tell...Mei Li to...come here,' she gasped. A sudden, hysterical laugh escaped from between her lips.

'Why?'

Ada glanced down and captured his hands in hers. Pressing them against her abdomen she waited until he felt the light pressure fluttering out from under her skin.

'Go and get Mei Li,' she said, returning his proud smile, 'Tell her the babies are awake.'

**The End (finally).**

---

Oh that feels so good...and yet so sad. I've been writing this for well over a year and I miss it already. But I'm also glad I was able to finish this massive monster of a fan fiction. I'm deeply grateful for your patience.

Not that I'm trying to manipulate reviews, but it's my birthday next week so if you're reading this but haven't left a review yet, now would be an extra special time to do so. :-)

In the future I plan to write a third and final story to complete this series, so keep an eye out for that. However, right now 'Mr and Mrs Kennedy' needs my urgent attention!

And to let you all know, a **Leon/Ada fanfiction writing competition** will be launched soon! Please check out 'The Another Order', which is the Leon/Ada forum on this site. I'm on the judging panel and I'd love to see all of you Leon/Ada lovers involved when it's launched.

I wish I could hug you all with words, but a simple 'thank you' will have to do,

Carly x


End file.
